


The Specimen Strikes Back

by nacimynom



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: sheppard_hc, Drama, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2016-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 50,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nacimynom/pseuds/nacimynom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While still reeling from the events of the "Sunday" season 3 episode, the team is split up by difficult circumstances. Her Wraith detector tingling, Teyla wakes up alone in a very strange place. The last thing she remembers was that Sheppard had been with her. Will anything stop her from finding out what the heck is going on? Written for the sheppard hc Summer Pic-Fic Challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for: The Sheppard_hc 2013 Summer Pic-Fic Challenge
> 
> Spoilers: Set during Season 3, soon after "Sunday"
> 
> Acknowledgements: Coolbreeze1 provided the very cool pic prompt. Amycat8733 and firedew are my wonderful beta readers. 
> 
> Disclaimer: The SGA world is not mine. I wrote this story for fun not profit

A bone-deep cold infiltrated Teyla’s dreamless sleep. As that familiar warning sign filled every fiber of her body with dread, it dissipated the fogginess that swaddled her mind. She had to wake up to warn the others.

“Colonel … John? I sense Wraith,” she tried to shout. It came out as a hoarse, barely audible whisper that sounded like another person.

She used a surge of fear-induced strength to pry open and _keep_ open her incomprehensively heavy eyelids. The effort made her as tired as a sparring session with Ronon. The reward did not seem worthy of her energy expenditure. All she saw were tall metallic conduits and geometric mirrored surfaces that reflected indiscernible shapes. Everything was dimly lit in pale blue and pink hues.

The intensifying chilling sensation alerting her that the Wraith was getting closer did wonders to shake off the lingering torpor from her mind. But no matter how many times she blinked to clear her eyes, her surroundings remained distorted and utterly alien.

She had no memory of how she had ended up in this strange place. The last thing she remembered was that she had been following John, watching their six, while he kept track of the Wraith Dart. For Ronon and Rodney’s sake, they needed to stop it before it reached the stargate. As he fired his P90 at the Dart, she had caught sight of a fast approaching shadow. Acting on instinct, she had pushed John to the ground to avoid the expected culling beam. His muffled groan made her suspect that he had sustained an injury. Before she had a chance to ask, a sharp pain struck the back of her head and then—and then, nothing.

She recalled nothing else until she woke up here. Wherever here might be. Something—no, many things were terribly wrong.

Most pressing though, the cold wrongness pervading her from within indicated that the Wraith had to be standing right next to her.

Verging on full-blown panic, she tried to lift her hand to wipe her eyes and clear her vision, but she could not move her limbs. It was as if her body had been glued to the hard, chilled surface upon which she found herself resting. The fine hair on her arms prickled from the pull of what John and Rodney called goose bumps. Her tailbone hurt from lying flat on her back for a prolonged period of time. Her muscles remained stubbornly unresponsive to that inner call to flee immediately.

With tremendous effort she turned her head to face the direction of the Wraith. She preferred to face her death.

She could barely discern his shape. There was something very strange about it. Squinting helped her judge that he was a little over five hand spans away from her. Like her, he was supine and encased in a transparent box-like container. Its shape, but not its composition, reminded her of the wood caskets the Genii used to bury their dead—her own people preferred funeral pyres, when there were any remains left of their loved one.

Unlike her, this Wraith was completely immobile and appeared unconscious. As she certainly did not wish to be around to find out for how long he would remain in this harmless state, she ratcheted up her efforts to force her body to move and her eyes to focus.

Her sight cleared up before she regained control of her limbs. A glance down her body confirmed her suspicion that all her clothes were gone. At that realization, her eyes snapped back to the dormant Wraith.

He too was naked.

That was why, when she had first seen him through her unfocused vision, his shape had appeared so strange. Before she turned her sight away from the unwanted image, she noticed thin tubing stuck into the top of his hand and the side of his neck. The tubing snaked out of the container, through one of several small round holes lining its side, and disappeared out of her line of sight. The slightly stinging prickles on her own reawakened right hand and neck led her to surmise that she had similar tubing protruding from her own body.

Her imagination—fueled by personal experience and numerous Earth movies watched with her Atlantis friends—immediately leaped to the conclusion that noxious substances were being infused into her body. That would explain why she still felt the pull of sleep streaming through her veins.

She refused to succumb to it and threw all her strength and willpower against it.

Her left arm finally moved. She snatched her still somewhat numb right hand, raising it so that she could see as she pulled out the long needle and tubing that had been inserted between her pointer and middle fingers. She ignored the pain and the blood streaking down her palm.

Who had done this and to what purpose? Anger now energized her.

She probed the side of her neck area and found a similar implement inserted there. This one she pulled out with a modicum of additional caution before she pressed a finger at the entry site. Now that she was fully awake, an even greater worry gnawed away at her: where were John and the others?

Suddenly, the container that held her jerked into motion. Wherever it was going could not possibly be a good thing for her. The blood dribbling from her neck lost its priority. She pushed with both hands against the top enclosing her; there was not enough head space to fully extend her arms.

The top did not budge.

Through her peripheral vision, she noticed that the Wraith’s container was moving too. She peered down the length of her body and caught a view of the rails on which both of their containers were running in parallel. They were headed toward a dark, low rectangular opening through the farthest wall.

Desperate to find a way out, she bent her knees and planted her shins against the top. She pressed as hard as she could with her legs and arms. When she noticed the latch on the right panel of the enclosure, she concentrated her efforts on that side. She pushed and pounded, again and again, smearing the bloody prints she kept on making with her right hand.

With a crack, the latch finally snapped.

Her time was running out—the opening now loomed too close. Without hesitation, she lifted the top pane and extricated herself from the container. While she clambered out, she lost her grip on the pane. It nearly shut on her ankle as she flopped onto the metal grating covering the machinery attached to the rear of the container. As she caught her breath from the exertion, she crouched low, fearful that someone might have seen her. Fortunately, the long chamber appeared to be deserted.

A flicker of movement caught her attention.

A third container had appeared from the opening they were headed toward and would reach in mere seconds. That container was moving in the opposite direction on a third railing. A narrow corridor separated her from its tracks. When the container neared, she noticed that it held nothing except a few splatters of dark green goop on its side panels. They looked strange and somewhat familiar, reinforcing her growing conviction that danger lurked on the other side of that opening.

Teyla did not want to go through there. Seeing no better option, she leaped off from the moving container.

Despite landing in the corridor on soft knees, she stumbled and fell sideways against the nearest railing, scraping and bruising her right hip, buttock and upper thigh. Although dazed by the impact, she kept on moving, periodically glancing behind her to ensure that she was not leaving a trail of blood. Her luck could not hold much longer; someone was bound to come and check on the status of the containers or the other equipment lining the walls of this cavernous, windowless chamber.

To make sure that they would not hurt her, she gingerly touched the next set of pipes before she climbed over them and crossed the rails on which the empty container moved. The floor was cool and smooth under her bare feet. Its metallic texture was unlike any building flooring she had ever walked on. In fact, it reminded her of the Orion, the Ancient spaceship John had flown to escape the volcanic eruptions on Taranis.

That clue and the stale taste of the air suggested that she might be in a space vessel or, perhaps, a modular station, like the moon base where her team had encountered Herick and Jamus, the place where John had risked his life to save hers. Little time had passed since then, but so much had happened. Carson and Harriet, her good friends, were among the many fine people who had died or been badly injured on an ill-fated Sunday that Elizabeth had specifically designated for rest and relaxation. Such sadness.

But this was not the time for reminiscing.

After she climbed over another set of railings, she hid behind one of the wide large metal cylinders that lined the wall on this side of the chamber. She took stock of her situation.

She had woken up here alone, with no clothes or weapons, and no clue as to who had brought her here and why. Two things she was certain of—this was not a Wraith hive or cruiser and her captors did not have benign intentions. One of the many things she did not know was whether she should hope that John had been taken too or if it would be better for him to have been left behind on the Wraith-infested planet. Maybe he had found Ronon and Rodney, and the three of them were now searching for her. But, no, that did not seem possible given what she remembered.

Her body’s many aches prompted her to shift on her haunches into a more comfortable position. Some of these aches she could trace to the fall. Others, like the sharp stitch low on her right side, she had no recollection of their origin.

Another container returned from the exit that she had avoided. When it neared her hiding spot, she recognized her own bloodied handprints on its walls and the latch she had broken. The container had been gone for only a few minutes before it reappeared.

After she watched it pass by, another container returned on the same tracks. This one was empty except for smears of what she now recognized to be Wraith blood and bits of flesh scattered on the bottom. The latch to this container was undamaged. What had happened to the Wraith? Most likely, by waking up and leaping out of the container, she had just avoided a gruesome death.

The Wraith had saved her.

In his absence, she would have remained unconscious and would have met the same dreadful end. The momentary delight at recognizing the irony of the situation got swept away by a horrifying thought. If John too had been entrapped in one of these contraptions, he would not have woken up in time to escape.

No, she told herself, he could not be dead. To lose him too, that would be too much.

Teyla shook off the veil of despair that threatened to paralyze her. Instead of wasting time with suppositions, she had to focus on what she could do. Her top priority was to determine John’s whereabouts. Along the way, she would uncover the who, why, and where of her capture. If John was here, she would find him. Together they would escape and resume their hunt for Rodney and Ronon. It would not be too late.

First though, she had to procure weapons and clothes would be nice too. While quite comfortable in her own skin, she would prefer not to have to fight for her life in the nude.

Having decided that the best way to start would be at the beginning, Teyla stealthily followed the rail tracks to retrace the journey she must have taken while still unconscious. She hoped to be able to intercept whoever might notice that the latch to one of these strange containers had been broken off.

She needed to forestall the raising of an alarm for an escaped prisoner. Anyone who had the guile to imprison not only humans but also Wraith had to be quite a formidable foe. Her best tactic was to delay confrontation until she could do it on her own terms.

Fortified by her admittedly vague plan, she followed the tracks toward what she had labeled the entrance of this long narrow hall. She cautiously peered inside. She saw and heard nothing alarming.

With one last glance behind, she went through. 


	2. Chapter 2

One moment, John had been firing round after round at the Dart, becoming increasingly frustrated because it had flown nearly out of range. Then, out of nowhere, twin sharp pains had struck him at the back of the head, as if two nails were being rammed into his skull. Teyla had yelled something and pushed him to the ground. Disoriented by the pain, he had crashed down awkwardly. His tac vest did little to cushion the right side of his ribcage from the impact onto a tangle of deadwood and rocks.

Even though he hadn’t hit it, the hammering in his head became excruciating and then his world dissolved into nothing.

The next moment, he woke up as something cut into the back of his left triceps. Instinctively aware that he wasn’t in friendly territory, he stopped himself from crying out. Though he couldn’t help but jerk away from the object that relentlessly burrowed into his arm.

His temporary loss of self-control didn’t matter. He hadn’t moved at all.

Tight rubbery bands restrained him at the forehead, chest, hips, wrists, elbows, thighs and ankles. He couldn’t even turn his head. A contraption that he couldn’t see held him face down, at an angle so that his head was lower than his feet.

Below him there was a pale grey floor made of large rectangular plates. The room was brightly lit from above; he could see his own shadow. He appeared to have been strapped into a sort of oblong frame, like a giant version of the fancy metal baskets Mrs. Danview—their family’s talented cook—used to grill whole fish for his father’s pretentious barbecue parties.

Four elongated shapes flanked his shadow. They moved like arms with extra joints. Robotic, he guessed. That had to be a better explanation than the other idea that popped into his head. Extra-creepy aliens.

No one spoke. The only noises he heard were a low persistent hum, like a spinning fan, and sporadic clicking noises. No sounds of breathing or other movements. A bitter chemical scent, reminiscent of formaldehyde and chlorine bleach, assaulted his nostrils.

All the information that he could gather with his admittedly restricted senses suggested that he was alone in the room.

At first he thought that this place wasn’t anything Wraith-related. Then he second guessed himself. He couldn’t rule out that it might be something concocted by Michael—he tended to be more creative than the others of his kind. John still felt guilty for his part in the genesis of that über-evil Wraith nemesis. He should have fought harder against the experiment. But why was he even thinking of this? Guilt was such a useless emotion to creep up on him at this time.

Despite the utter discomfort, his first truly coherent thought zoomed in on Teyla. Where and how was she? From his very limited range of sight, not a trace of her—he wanted to believe that her absence was a good thing. Wherever she was had to better than his current predicament. The other possibility was too awful to even think about. She had just gotten back off the injured list since that Sunday when they lost Carson and too many others.

Don’t go there, John told himself. And this was also not the time to think about Rodney and Ronon’s whereabouts. In this rather dicey situation, he had to focus on the here and now to maintain a solid grip on himself.

The scorching heat that wracked his injured arm, contrasted wildly with the cold that penetrated deep into the rest of his body. He was surprised not to see misty puffs coming out of his mouth as he panted through the agony.

Whatever kind of hell this was, it was freezing.

And, to top it off, he had been liberated of every stitch of clothing. His time well spent at the US Air Force SERE school notwithstanding, it was damned hard to maintain confidence in oneself when that self was naked, restrained and undergoing some type of invasive surgery while wide awake. During those not so fun-filled training sessions, he had not been exposed (pardon the pun) to anything resembling this particular scenario.

His head throbbed, a lingering reminder of the last thing he had felt before waking up in this torture chamber. What the f—k had happened?

He didn’t believe that anyone could have possibly managed to get past Teyla to bludgeon or shoot him at the back of his thick skull. Not unless they had gotten to her first.

But no, he remembered that this monster of a headache had come first, before Teyla had tackled him to the ground. She had ended up sprawled on top of him, frankly feeling heavier than she should. She had been yelling something. Maybe a warning of some kind. He could think of no reason for either of them to have been singled out for special attention. Whoever had taken him must have taken her too. She had to be alright. At least, she had to be alive.

The pain made it so hard to think straight.

The pressure in his arm relented for a few seconds as the drill withdrew. His sigh of relief became a yelp, or rather a squelched manly groan, when another instrument dug into his arm. It pulled and tugged, like forceps or a pitchfork. He gritted his teeth as he rode through the searing pain and the accompanying waves of nausea that threatened to make him spew his guts.

The forceps scraped bone. His eyes misted and he could no longer follow the movements of the shadows vivisecting him. He bit his lip to stop his urge to scream.

After what seemed forever, the forceps finally withdrew. Something clanged into a receptacle.

His transmitter, no doubt. So much for Carson’s—bless his departed soul—bright idea to implant it deeper to avoid detection by camouflaging it along the bone. Great in theory, but the repercussions, not so much. Note to self: recommend reinstituting the old-fashioned subcutaneous approach. Easy in, easy out.

Blood, his blood to be exact, dripped onto the floor. It wasn’t an alarming amount yet, but still …

“Hey, at least put a bandage on it,” he said, not the cleverest of conversation starters but it was the most polite thing he could came up with. It wasn’t the time to piss off his captors, yet.

No one replied.

Instead, a cold blunt probe pressed along the line of his spine starting at the base of his neck.

He definitely didn’t like where it was going. “What are you doing? How about we talk about this?”

Silence, except for the steady clicking sounds he supposed were being made by the mechanisms of the robotic arms. Was he really alone? Someone had to be monitoring whatever was being done to him.

The probe stopped right above his tail bone. The clicks replaced by whirls. No longer blunt, the probe’s newly sharp tip began to drill. Slowly.

What he felt now made him completely forget his hurt arm and head.

He fought the restraints. Nothing budged.

“What … do … you want?” he asked, struggling to speak instead of screaming.

No one answered.

Another probe began its trek down his spine. This one stopped half way down his back before it too started to drill. In a tremendous shock wave, pain swept out to fire what had to be every single nerve ending in his body. He couldn’t breathe. This was worse than when the Wraith had fed on him.

His stomach flipped. At the first sounds of retching, a flexible hose, like the trunk of an elephant, reached over him and covered his mouth. It sucked up his vomit on the go.

Not a drop fell to the floor.

He coughed and gagged, unable to fill his lungs with enough oxygen. Some sort of tubing must have been strategically placed farther south along his body because, while he was sure that he had wet himself, no liquid other than blood splattered the floor. As if his helpless nudity wasn’t humiliating enough.

The removal of his transmitter he could understand in a strategic way, but he couldn’t figure out the reason for the other surgical stuff.

“Why are you doing this?” he said in a whisper before he passed out.

After that, time passed excruciatingly slowly and paradoxically quickly as the ministrations of new implements of pain jarred John into consciousness and the agony escalated until he plunged back into blissful oblivion.

When he managed to string a few thoughts together, he couldn’t decide what was worse, being woken up by a thin tube snaking through his nostril down his throat, or to the sting of multiple simultaneous injections into his stomach, the side of his neck and—of all things—between his middle and pointer fingers. Though, maybe, he didn’t have to choose. So far, his hosts had demonstrated the uncanny ability to outdo themselves in the nasty surprise department.

In another moment of lucidity, John figured out that while there had to be a point to these excruciating procedures, all the reasons he could conjure up were too absurd to be true. Which meant that at least one of them had to be on the mark.

Even more than the physical torment, what was driving him nuts was the unbroken silence that followed each of the questions he flung out in a progressively croakier voice. If his captors were going to dissect him to death, at the very least they should have the courtesy to tell him why.


	3. Chapter 3

Teyla clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. The slight vibrations she felt under her bare feet supported her hunch she had somehow been spirited away into the bowels of a space vessel—a large and, fortunately for her, sparsely inhabited one. Unfortunately, the vessel’s climate controls were not set at a temperature fit for humans, especially naked ones.

The only good thing about having no clothes that might rustle or boots that might thud was that she needed minimal effort to move silently. While that was a skill she had mastered since early adolescence, now her movements were alarmingly uncoordinated. She had already tripped twice on nothing but her own toes. Maybe her sluggishness was the effect of drugs still lingering in her system or a combination of the cold, sore muscles and multitude of body aches. 

She stooped as she walked through the low rectangular passage. It was no wider than the space occupied by the three parallel rail tracks and the narrow corridor that ran between the tracks. The only light came from the hall she had just left and the one she would soon reach.

Fearful of being caught unaware by an approaching container or worse, she periodically glanced behind her shoulder. No signs of danger, so far.

At the end of the passage, she flattened herself against the wall and surveyed the next chamber. It was completely empty.

Similar to the room where she had woken up, this one had no visible doors, but unlike the other much larger room, the walls and ceiling here were lined by mirrored panels and the space was circular. In the middle of the floor the tracks split off in two directions. The two on her right continued straight and the other took a ninety-degree turn to the left.

Teyla mulled over her choices. She could follow the left track that had carried the container that she had escaped from or the two going straight, the direction she must have come from while unconscious. If she followed the left track, she might be able to stop anyone from discovering the broken container and hunting her down. But the passage straight in front of her held the potential for a much greater reward. It might lead her to somewhere in the vicinity of where she had been divested of her clothing and her weapons. Even better, in that direction she might encounter a container holding John. Until she found clear evidence to indicate otherwise, she would not even consider the possibility that he might have already been killed.

With a great sense of urgency, she opted to forge straight ahead. Her clumsiness gone, she moved lightly on the balls of her feet.

As she crossed the room, the sight of her tiny, distorted reflection multiplied to infinity was not as disconcerting as the sudden thought that someone might be watching her. Maybe her captors knew that she had escaped and they were just letting her think that she was free. Or, perhaps, they had such confidence in the devices and drugs they used to control their captives that they had not foreseen the need to outfit the interior of their vessel with surveillance equipment.

She much preferred the latter possibility.

As she traveled through the next passage, she tried to avoid distracting herself with speculations about the identity of the inhabitants of this vessel. Even though she had time for only a cursory examination of her surroundings, she had a strong feeling that they were not humans, Wraith, Ancients or any of the other sentient beings that she had encountered so far in her travels. Whoever they were, they apparently did not have much interest in nurturing friendly relations with other species.

Part of her dreaded meeting them, the other part wanted to kill them.    

The next chamber also showed no signs of life. All four walls were occupied by instruments, some with blinking lights, others with monitors displaying colorful graphics of changing shapes and curves. The equipment reminded her a little of Carson Beckett’s or rather now Jennifer Keller’s laboratory. The main difference being the grander scale, vaster number and bolder color scheme of the ones here. The eye-jarring bright pinks, purples and blues were definitely beyond the muted palette that pervaded Atlantis.

In contrast to the eerie silence that she had encountered in the other parts of the ship, this room was filled by a cacophony of clicking, beeping and buzzing noises. Along one wall, formations of pinkie-finger slim, multicolored tubes were neatly lined up in racks that moved along a conveyor belt system until they were individually grabbed by multiple flexible appendages and inserted within the panels of a tall, egg-shaped machine. As each panel slid shut, pulses of green and magenta lights radiated upwards to a large flashing screen that fanned out from the tip of the egg.

Teyla wasted no time trying to make sense of the patterns of colors that advanced from right to left on the screen. Something else drew her attention.

A third of the way into the room, the twin tracks that she had been following vanished from sight within a horizontal, thick-walled, cobalt blue cylinder—its shape reminiscent of the MRI scanner that had been brought over from Earth before the scientists had learned the true versatility of the much more compact Ancient scanners.

The machinery at the rear of two transport containers protruded from the end closest to her. She could not see who lay within them. Her heart filled with the hope that she might have found John.

Even though she had no idea how long she might have to wait, she dismissed the inner voice of experience that shouted at her not stay in any one place for too long. This was a risk worth taking.

She hid behind a nearby array of floor-to-ceiling pipes and set herself to wait until the containers exited the giant scanner. She sat and wrapped her arms around her knees in an attempt to conserve heat.

After a while she had to rub and massage her arms to fight off the numbness. Her nose itched and she already had to snuff several incipient sneezes. At least her finger nails had not turned blue as of yet.

Interminable minutes passed until the lights on what she assumed was the scanner’s control panel flickered and shut off.

She sense Wraith before the containers moved on the rails and its two unconscious captives became visible to her eyes. Despite the disappointment, she was curious at the revelation that while it functioned, the machine had masked the Wraith presence from her senses. She filed that information away for the future.

The containers with the Wraith proceeded on their journey out of the room in the direction where she had come from. Teyla felt no pity for those two—the fewer Wraith, the better.

To avoid inadvertently activating a machine or alarm, she didn’t touch anything as she searched around for something to wear or use as a weapon, preferably both. If this room was the equivalent of a laboratory, there might be protective clothing or laboratory coats like the ones the scientists and medical personnel used in Atlantis. Even a blanket or drape would be nice.

She found nothing useful.

She went through the next passage even more quickly than the previous one. An ominous feeling in her gut was telling her to hurry or she would be too late. For what, she did not know.

Since there was no space between the rail tracks and the walls, she walked between the twin rails of one track. The soles of her feet had gotten used to the chill. Or maybe they had gone numb.

A sudden rush of colder air chilled her naked back. She jumped over to the other set of rails just in time before a container swooshed by. This one moved much faster than the others. She caught a flash of its occupant. It was neither human nor Wraith. She could not be certain, but it looked like one of the large, tree dwelling animals native to the planet her team had been visiting before everything went wrong. Before the four of them had gotten split up, John and Rodney had entertained themselves with obscure jokes about red-bottomed baboons, whatever those were. They had promised to show her and Ronon pictures and then the Wraith had appeared from nowhere.

She felt sorry for the creature, but she had to persevere onward. Her priorities were to find John, then Ronon and Rodney. The rescue of others would have to wait.

While she was definitely thankful that no one awake frequented these areas, the fact that she had yet to encounter a single crew member puzzled her. Did they ever use these passages? How many of the internal functions of this vessel were automated?

This part of the ship had been specifically set up to process captives, for a yet to be determined purpose, until they were disposed of like kitchen refuse. Everything she had seen so far looked like a larger, more automated version of the systems employed by the Hoffan scientists to handle the small animals they experimented on when they were developing their ill-advised drug. Were she and the Wraith supposed to be experimental subjects or food or what?

She again took every precaution to scout out the next chamber before entering it. Unlike the other rooms, this one had a distinguishable doorway. It was shut and it stood in the middle of the wall facing her. Four empty containers were stacked into two racks in the middle of the wide room, obscuring the view of its other half. Evenly spaced in front of each rack, there were two large hip-high oval pedestals. A fifth empty container sat on top of one pedestal; there was nothing on the other one. Each pedestal was flanked by a wheeled cube, similar in size to the utility carts used in the Atlantis infirmary, and a tall cone from whose tip protruded six long appendages.

Teyla did not have a chance to explore the room.

Without making a sound, a bright blue beam of light shot out from an indentation in the ceiling above the unoccupied pedestal. At the same time, she experienced a powerful resurgence of the headache that had persisted as a minor nuisance since she had regained consciousness.

Not knowing what to expect, she huddled behind the other pedestal. She hoped that if someone came they would not notice her immediately, giving her a chance to decide on a course of action.

The blue light spread to cover the entire surface of the pedestal. Then it began to pulse. Even though watching the strobe beam made her feel nauseous, Teyla forced herself to keep her eyes open. Whatever was happening was important.

Three things happened at once: The beam shut off; a familiar cold chill jarred her senses to high alert;   and a motionless Wraith appeared sprawled on the pedestal.

What she had just witnessed had to be the result of something akin to Asgard beaming technology. That was how she had been brought into the ship.

In the time it took her to blink at the next sudden flash of blue light, the body disappeared and rematerialized within the container that stood on the pedestal next to her. Startled, she scooted away from it.

Then she saw that all of the Wraith’s clothes and gear had been left behind on the other pedestal, spread out in the same arrangement as they had been when worn by their owner.

No longer worried about staying out of sight of possible surveillance sensors, Teyla surged to her feet and bolted to grab the Wraith stunner. Before she had a chance to take anything else, the robotic arms adjoining each pedestal activated in a swirl of motion. Their clicking sounds reverberated in the otherwise quiet space. One set of tentacles inserted several thin tubes into the body of the newest captive; the other scooped up the Wraith’s uniform and gear, and placed them into a compartment that had opened at the top of the wheeled cart.

The compartment slid shut, its contents safe from Teyla’s reach unless she decided to do something drastic. In truth, she hadn’t been sure that she was desperate enough to wear a Wraith’s garments.

She slid her fingers along the gently curved line of the Wraith gun. She knew how to use it and if it ran out of charge it was the perfect length and weight for use in hand-to-hand combat. She was pleased with the choice she had made.

The cart rolled towards the exit. From a tiny opening in its front, an appendage telescoped out and touched a spot on the left side of doorway. It opened to reveal an empty rectangular space large enough to fit several people and service carts. It reminded Teyla of the transporters in Atlantis.  

Having nothing to lose and everything to gain, she stepped into the transporter. The cart’s limber appendage touched the middle of a horizontal row of three buttons set on the transporter wall. In response, the door shut and she felt an upward movement. She adjusted her grip on the gun to get ready for whatever would come next.

A few seconds later the transporter opened its door. No one rushed out to apprehend her.

Instead, the cart rolled out at a leisurely pace into a room more brightly lit than the ones at the lower level. The air also smelled different, less stale but pungently unpleasant—an unrecognizable mix of odors from strong unnatural chemicals. Breathing it made her feel as if her nasal passages were being scoured by a metal bristle-brush. On the positive side, her sinuses immediately dried up despite the lingering chilly temperature.

The cart presented itself to another tentacle-cone machine which emptied it of its cargo and loaded it into a moving row of buckets that fed into a cabinet-sized instrument. Monitors lit up to show columns of scrolling incomprehensible characters. The device chirped and buzzed without revealing anything about its inner workings.

Rodney would surely have been fascinated by it. However, something more mundane drew Teyla’s attention to the first row of shelves that stood on the other side of the mysterious laboratory apparatus.

At one end of a neatly arranged line of Wraith footwear, her boots and John’s sat in plain view. As she stepped forward, she also noticed a bundle of Atlantis-black clothing on the shelf beneath the boots.

Caught in the excitement of her find, she almost did not hear the clacking sounds approaching from the far end of the room.


	4. Chapter 4

John regained consciousness when he felt himself being rotated like a chicken splayed on a rotisserie. The frame’s motion triggered another bout of nausea. He opened his mouth and took a deep slow breath to stop the urge to upchuck whatever was left in his stomach. Not a smart move—he had forgotten about the foul air. Instead of retching, he coughed, a dry hacking that pulled at his sore stomach muscles. 

Once he had been repositioned face up, with feet and head on the same level plane, the whole contraption locked into place. The jolt rekindled the pain from all his injuries. There were some, in mighty uncomfortable places, that he couldn’t account for based on what he remembered had been done to him. Be grateful for small mercies his grandmother used to say, mostly about all sorts of things that hadn’t made any sense to him when he was a little kid.

Once he stopped coughing, he realized that the room was perfectly quiet. The various torture implements were not turned on at the moment and the temperature was not as chilly as it had been. These had to be good things. Maybe Nana had been right.

He opened his eyes. Bright pink lights blinded him. Even though he immediately snapped them shut, a stinging sensation brought down a few tears. Spots of light continued to blaze through his firmly shut eyelids as though they had been burned onto his retinas.

Just as he had done all the other times he had come back to his senses, he pulled at the restraints in the hope that they had been miraculously loosened.

No such luck.

His body was a patchwork of different kinds of pain. Topping off the list of most annoying were the pulsing fire that enveloped his left arm, the headache that continued to pound his skull, the dozens of injection sites that stung like acid, and the intense cramps that shot through his arms and legs at random times.

Maybe he had also suffered brain damage because no matter how hard he wracked his brain, he couldn’t come up with a single, even remotely viable escape plan. Practically blind and shackled from head to ankle, he had nothing to work with.

The assurance of the _leave no one behind_ policy provided no comfort because as far as he knew all his teammates were in as bad or worse trouble than him. To top it off, there hadn’t been any time to send Intel back to Atlantis about this mother of all FUBARed missions. By now they had definitely missed their last scheduled check-in. Elizabeth might have already sent Lorne on a search and rescue mission, where they would have come up with no clues as to their whereabouts.

He got yanked out of his funk by a series of loud clacks coming from the far side of the room. It sounded like multiple pairs of high heels walking on a hardwood floor. _Buck up. You got company_ , he told himself.

The sound temporarily stopped and was replaced by a light tapping, possibly fingers hitting a keyboard. When the advancing clicking steps resumed, the temperature dropped quickly to its previous frigid level.

John shivered from the burst of cold air on his naked skin.

The steps stopped very close to his left side. John got a whiff of a sulfur smell strong enough to overpower the underlying formaldehyde-bleach scent of the air. Even the Wraith didn’t smell this bad.

To avoid being blinded by the lights again, he peered through his eyelashes. Above him, the pink lights had been dimmed so that he could see the light fixtures recessed within the rows of small mirrored square panels that completely covered the arched ceiling. The reflections were tiny and distorted. The best that John could figure was that the being looming next to him, outside the reach of his peripheral vision, had a golden head and lime green clothes. Or was it skin or fur?

It spewed out a rapid fire stream of guttural syllables. Maybe he was being ethnocentric, but to John it sounded like a weird remix of Klingon and either Russian or German. Of course that made him decide to call his captor Worf, even though Worf had been a good guy and this one—whether it was male, female or whatever—definitely was up to no good.

No cultural misunderstanding could possibly justify what he had been subjected to.

As soon as Worf stopped talking, a gender-neutral, toneless voice from the other side of the room said, “It is good that you are finally awake. The results of your analysis are aberrant; you must answer my questions.”

John skipped protesting the choice of “analysis” as a euphemism for medical torture and went right into pondering about what had just happened. Obviously, Worf & Co. had a universal translator of some sort, no funky (and hard to understand even for his Mensa-level intelligence) stargate-induced common-language effect around here. This implied that he had not been carried through a stargate and that he was not in some sort of secret facility that had somehow escaped first the MALP and then Rodney’s meticulous scans of the planet. The simplest explanation had to be that he was on a spaceship, a very alien one.

“Who are you?” he said. The rawness in his throat made him sound as raspy as a twenty-pack-a-day smoker or like the device that promptly translated his question in Worf’s language.

A whirling sound startled him. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, his previous sessions had trained him to associate that sound with pain.

He steeled himself to being hurt again.

Instead, a spray of liquid hit his dry, cracked lips. It tasted like water. He licked and swallowed all the moisture within his reach. Not at all dignified, but necessary.

More guttural sounds from Worf before the translator kicked in and said, “I will ask the questions and you will answer.” The mechanical voice paused with a theatrical flair before it continued. “What is your planet of origin?”

John picked the first thing that came to mind. “The place where you kidnapped me.”

As the translator did its thing, John wondered how accurate it was. Rodney’s primary concern would have been to figure out how it worked.

“That is false,” Worf said. “Genomic sequencing and single nucleotide polymorphism analyses indicate that you bear a very distant kinship with the other warm-blooded, bipedal sentient specimens we collected from that planet.”

That was impressive. The translator definitely had a very rich vocabulary, complete with plausible sounding scientific verbiage. John’s mind practically buzzed as it processed the bits of useful information mixed in with the technical mumbo jumbo. “Collected specimens? Who the hell are you?”

“Our identity is of no consequence to you. Suffice it to say, one of our missions is to carry out a comprehensive, intergalactic astrobiological survey of sentient and protosentient species. That is why we have captured you. If you want to regain your freedom, you must truthfully answer my questions. Where is your planet of origin?”

John suppressed the impulse to protest the legitimacy and morality of any sentient species collecting and experimenting on others. Undoubtedly that argument would fall on deaf ears or whatever sensory appendage Worf used for listening. He said, “Athos.”

“That is also false. We have collected numerous specimens from that planet, including the one we captured with you. You do not share sufficient haploidentity to support a claim of genetic kinship with the Athosians.”

John felt a mixture of relief and fear at this confirmation that Teyla had been snagged too. He had to find a way to make sure she was safe. “My parents were culled by the Wraith when I was a little kid and the Athosians took me in. I don’t remember where I came from originally.”

Warned by the loud steps, John acted unfazed by the large head covered in golden fur that suddenly loomed over him.

This feigned nonchalance was hard. Worf didn’t look like anything he had imagined. The best thing was that there was nothing bug-like or otherwise scary about him. The first analogy that popped into John’s head was of a goat or sheep with an incredibly developed, multi-lobed cranium and very tiny ears. Its pelt-covered face sported a short snout flanked by a pair of big, orange oval eyes with rhombus-shaped pupils. It wore a long-sleeve tunic without any visible buttons or zippers.

“Why do you insist in telling falsehoods? That story is a common one in this quadrant, but it is not true in your case.” The translator seemed to be working faster now. In perfect timing with the end of the sentence, Worf raised one arm to give John a brief glimpse of the small device it held between its seven long furry fingers.

Before John could close his fist, Worf splayed his fingers open as it placed the device into his palm. As soon as it touched his skin, John felt the familiar hum of Ancient technology. It was the life-sign detector he carried in a pocket of his tac-vest.

“Your activation of this instrument confirms the results of our phylogenetic analyses which indicate that you are a direct descendant of the Alterans who disappeared from this galaxy ten thousand years ago, presumably exterminated by the Wraith. Your existence is proof that they were not vanquished.” Worf took the life-sign detector away and waved a small round object in front of his nose.

John recognized his transmitter, now sporting a cracked casing and protruding filaments. It was broken beyond repair.

Worf continued with his lecture. “Moreover, this device that we removed from your arm, as well as your clothing and gear, contain elements not found in this galaxy. Finally, elemental analysis of your body fluids and biopsy samples from your major organs demonstrate traces of molecules and isotopes not endemic to this galaxy. All of these data irrefutably indicate your provenance from another part of the universe. Therefore I posit that a sizable group of Alterans fled from this galaxy and settled somewhere else where they bred sufficiently to produce progeny such as you.”

“I don’t know anything about Alterans,” John said. He wondered how well his feigned innocence would translate. Odds were high that once again his ATA gene had landed him in very deep doo-doo.

“What you know or do not know remains to be determined. This will be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of my generation. You must l tell me where you are from if you want to earn your life and your freedom.”

“Okay, you got me. I am going to tell you about my real planet,” John said, deciding to switch tactics. “But before I tell you anything, I want to see my companion to make sure she’s alright.”

Worf made an obnoxious honking sound that went  untranslated. John suspected that it was a laugh.

Then Worf grabbed his left arm and squeezed. John bit his lip to clamp down a yell. Somewhere under that fur, there were some mighty sharp claws or fingernails.  

It leaned over him, giving him a prime view of the neat double row of teeth and blue tongue inside the lipless mouth as it spoke, spraying him with spittle that stung his skin. It did not release his arm until the translator had finished relaying the message, “You are in no position to make demands.”

“Okay, let me explain something to you in simple to translate words.” John waited for the translator to finish with that sentence before he continued. “I’m not going to tell you anything until I see her.”

They stared at each other until Worf stepped away where John couldn’t see him. There was a long pause in their friendly chat while Worf  tapped away at something, maybe a computer keyboard, and spoke presumably with someone through a communication device. Given the loud way these people moved around, John felt certain that there wasn’t anyone else in the room. He could hear only Worf’s side of the conversation and the universal translator stayed quiet. Then, Worf stomped around the room, pulled open a couple of squeaky cabinets or drawers, and rummaged through some noisy objects.

John spent the time coming up with a plausible story to convince it that he needed Teyla’s help to provide the requested information. Somehow he also had to talk Worf into freeing him from the restraints. He didn’t think that it would be very hard since in his current position it would be impossible for him to show them his home planet’s position on any kind of star chart, whether it was on a computer monitor, holograph or whatever other form they used for navigation. Also, the way he was already hurting, it shouldn’t be too hard to look harmless. Honestly, he wasn’t positive that he could stand up on his own two feet right now, but if it meant a chance for escape, he would find a way.

Once together, he and Teyla would be able to overpower their captors.

Worf resumed his position next to John. It held a multipronged metal instrument in its hand. “It is unfortunate, but I cannot accommodate your request to see your companion. If you value your life and want to avoid suffering additional pain and injury, you will answer my questions without further delay.”

John wasn’t afraid for himself, he was worried for Teyla. “Look, I have to see her because she has some of the information you want.”

“I believe that my colleague has erred in disposing of your companion so quickly. She would have been useful as leverage for your cooperation.” Worf snapped a thin serrated blade onto one of the arms of the instrument. “I have other ways to convince you to answer my questions truthfully. I do not mind gathering more data on the mechanism of action and limitations of your species’ pain receptors.”

While the not so subtle treat washed over him like it was nothing, John felt as if someone had just stabbed him in the gut. “What do you mean dispose? Where is she?”

“Your companion was Athosian, a subtype that we have already extensively studied. She had no value as a survey specimen and her body mass index did not meet the minimal criteria for our other ongoing experiments. Therefore, she was terminated and recycled to fuel our bioorganic processor.”

Worf continued talking, but John tuned him out. He kept on replaying in his mind the words that told him in no uncertain terms that Teyla was dead.

The thought of escape left his mind.

All he could think about now was revenge. He hadn’t felt such boiling fury since the Genii siege of Atlantis when Kolya had told him that he had killed Elizabeth.

Worf’s associate had thrown Teyla away like garbage to be used for compost and Worf acted as if this was just a minor inconvenience to earning its people’s equivalent of a Nobel prize. No matter how much it hurt right now, John didn’t have the luxury to let himself grieve for her.

He knew what he had to do and he would do it no matter what it cost him. Smug, self-centered jerks like Worf and its crewmates were bound to slip up in their security precautions. At the first opportunity, he would put a permanent end to their playing around with living, thinking beings as if they were bugs in a test tube.

But first, to convince Worf that he would tell it the truth, John had to let it play with him a little longer. The prospect of suffering through more torture didn’t faze him at all.

While his heart had splintered from one loss too many, his body felt completely numb.


	5. Chapter 5

Teyla had almost reached the coveted shelf when she heard a series of loud taps. Someone had entered the room and was moving towards her.

She stepped back to hide behind the end of the first row of shelves. She slid down into a low crouch. Her fingers rested lightly on the trigger of the Wraith gun while she waited. She regretted not having the time to tuck herself underneath one of the workbenches that lined the wall next to her. It would have afforded a much better hiding and spying spot.

As the sounds of the noisy newcomer neared, she readjusted her position to remain hidden. She could not tell by their number or rhythm if they came from one or more individuals. When she peeked through the piles of primarily Wraith gear stacked on the shelves next to her, she saw a pair of burnt orange, furry legs stalking down the corridor. All unclothed parts of the creature, including its large bulbous head, were covered in the same brightly colored pelt. The being wore an electric blue tunic that ended right above the first of two sets of knee-like joints. Those explained its rather bouncy gait.

Except for the tiny ears and strangely jointed limbs, its appearance reminded Teyla of a story that her long-lost childhood friend, Bhayda, had conjured up about the _ralbrak,_ a cuddly-looking tree climbing creature who pretended to befriend an Athosian girl before it tried to eat her (in the literal sense, not in the way of the Wraith). Teyla remembered being deliciously afraid while she listed to the story. She had been certain that such a creature did not inhabit their forests and that the girl in the story would ultimately prevail. She still believed in the last part.

Usually she left it entirely up to John and Rodney, sometimes with Ronon’s input, to find names for unfamiliar things. She preferred to be the spectator to their amusing squabbles. In their absence, upholding the naming tradition seemed a good way to maintain the hope that they would all be reunited, safe and sound. Or, at least, alive.

The ralbrak acted oblivious to her presence. It headed straight for the largest monitor on the instrument that occupied most of the space on this side of the room, and began to tinker with its control panel. Since it faced away from her, Teyla felt safe enough to take a better look.

She judged it to be about John’s height but with narrower shoulders and wider girth. Just like its legs, the arms also had an extra joint. When her eyes dropped at floor level, she understood the source of the strange pattern of walking sounds. It did not wear shoes. On each foot, five long clawed toes faced forward and two backwards.

The ralbrak’s attention shifted from the controls to the contents of the buckets that were exiting the machine. From a previously hidden compartment in the instrument, it pulled out a set of tools which it used to fiddle with one of the items in the bucket.

Teyla hoped that it would leave soon because the cold had become unbearable. To make matters worse, the strange mixture of irritating smells was making her nose itch and run. Disgusted with herself, she wiped her upper lip on her forearm.

The enforced stillness made her feel stiff and achy, but she could not shift her position for fear that such movements would attract the ralbrak’s attention. Since she had no idea how sensitive its sense of hearing was she did not want to take any chances. Hopefully, the odoriferous atmosphere masked her smell.

An insistent chirping sound startled the ralbrak. The tool it held fell to the floor with a loud clang. In a fluid movement, it stood on one foot and picked up the fallen object up with two of its prehensile toes. While one hand took possession of the tool, the other touched the side of its head above its left ear. The ralbrak spoke in a torrent of rumbling, grating sounds. Once in a while it would pause for a few moments before continuing. It was clearly talking to someone through a communicator device.

Maybe, it was receiving word of her escape. Or not. No use worrying; she would find out soon enough.

More than once Rodney had gone through lengthy explanations about the broad communication capabilities conferred by the stargates. She had paid close attention the first few times, but never quite understood how it worked. Not wanting to be subjected to more lectures she had never asked for a clearer explanation. Secretly, she thought that Rodney himself did not understand it as well as he pretended to. However, one message that Rodney’s diatribes and her own personal experience had made clear was that her present inability to understand the ralbrak’s language meant that they did not travel through the stargates and that they were too far to fall within a space stargate’s long range influence.

Finally, the conversation ended. The ralbrak moved closer to Teyla’s hiding spot to study one of the smaller monitors that lined the side of the machine. Unfortunately, that coincided with when the fiercest of all sneezes built up in her sinuses. Even though she fiercely suppressed it, she made a small hiccupping noise.

The ralbrak’s head rotated on its skinny neck, well past a human’s capacity. Its large unblinking eyes immediately located her. It uttered a harsh sound and lifted its hand to its ear. Before it activated the communication device, Teyla hit it in the chest with a quick burst from the Wraith gun. While the zapping rang excessively loud in her ears, she hoped that it would not carry out to the hallway.

The creature slumped backwards onto the control console and then slipped to the floor. It twitched repeatedly before it lay still. She had no idea how long the stun effect would work on the ralbrak’s physiology. She hurried to its side, pressed the nozzle of the gun in its fur and hit it twice more. This time the gun’s sounds came out pleasantly muffled.

It would not bother her one bit if the proximity and extra charges killed it.

She retrieved the Atlantis gear from the shelf and reached inside one of the pockets of the larger tactical vest. It was John’s. Positive confirmation that he had been captured along with her.

Thanks to his ingrained military training, she supposed, John stored his supplies in a consistent fashion. She did not have to search around for what she was looking for. Zip ties in hand, she returned to the inert body to tightly tie the hands behind its back and its feet together. She used multiple ties to immobilize not only wrists and ankles, but also the long fingers, toes and one set of knees. The creature’s dexterity duly noted. As she worked, she periodically scanned the room to make sure that no one was coming to investigate the noises.

She carded her fingers around the ralbrak’s left ear and slipped off a curved clip that she assumed was the comm unit. The fur felt silky to her touch. Contrary to her first impression, its color was a rich blend of shades ranging from the palest of yellows to a molten red that reminded her of the bursts of autumn foliage on old Athos.

Such a beautiful, benign looking creature. It was a pity that their relations had not started on amicable terms.

She ripped the hem of the tunic and used it to tightly gag its muzzle. Then she dragged it towards the wall that was least visible from the entryway that the ralbrak must have used to access the room. The body weighed less than she had expected given its size. Or maybe the adrenalin pumping through her system made her stronger than usual.

After she pushed the ralbrak underneath the nearest workbench, she covered it with some of the strange clothing she had found in a nearby low shelf. While the first row of shelves had contained Wraith and a variety of human belongings that Teyla recognized from different planets in Pegasus, the others held much more exotic things. The entire room appeared to be dedicated to the storage and analysis of the possessions of beings captured from far flung planets, some beyond this galaxy.

She went back to the pile of Atlantis gear. Afraid to remain in the open, she took mere seconds to decide what to take with her. The boots were too bulky for her to carry. After she rearranged some of the Wraith gear so as not to leave an obviously empty spot on the shelf, she swept up a bundle of clothing and weapons: hers and John’s. He would need his uniform when she found him.

The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that he had to be alive. Probably not in a very happy situation, but definitely living. Time and time again, in the three years she had known him, John had demonstrated an uncanny ability to find a way out of impossible predicaments. This would not be an exception.

She retreated to a new hiding spot where she had a good view of both entrances. As she rapidly dressed herself, she noticed multiple, fingernail-sized, rhombus shaped holes that had been punched out in every item of clothing. More puzzles for later.

The first things she slipped on were socks, both hers and John’s, to bring some relief to her frozen feet. Besides being a practical way to carry them, the cold environment also made it a very sensible solution for her to wear John’s undershirt, uniform overshirt and jacket on top of her own and his tac vest on top of hers. She made sure that the added bulk did not impede her range movements.

When she pulled up her underwear, she noticed the red welt to the left of her hip bone. That pinpointed the source of her persistent pain. It didn’t explain why. Once she zipped up her trousers, she tied John’s around her waist. She did not want to hear his complaints if she left them behind.

She strapped on their combat knives, stashed two smaller Wraith blasters inside the vest and John’s hand gun on a leg holster. She converted John’s P90 to a shoulder strap that she slung on her back; she kept hers hanging in front so that she could easily switch to it if needed. To avoid hull breaches, she preferred to use the Wraith weapons while she was still inside the ship. But if things turned out for the worse and she could not find a way to escape, she would not hesitate to use any means necessary to cause catastrophic damage to this vessel.

Now she had to get going because if she waited any longer the weariness that had been creeping up her body would take hold. From the pangs of hunger in her stomach, it felt as if it more than a day had passed since the team had breakfasted together before embarking on this mission.

She cast a last longing look at the boots. No, she would not take them. Their rubberized soles were built for quiet movements in outdoor terrain, stone and wood floors, but she was afraid that they might squeak on these metal floors. There was also no way for her to carry them and keeps her hands free for fighting. Maybe she could come back for them after she rescued John.

 

She moved to the entryway to scope out where she would go next in search of her teammate. The hallway was clear. She held the long stun gun in her hands as she moved out of the room.  

From what Teyla had seen so far, this vessel, or at least this part of it, appeared to be dedicated to scientific studies. In her exploration of the various rooms, which conveniently all had open entryways, she had not yet found any indication of a military presence. She did not need to understand the ralbrak verbal or written language to know that every room she had visited thus far was a laboratory. The signs had been unmistakable. And not in a good way.

The first ralbrak she caught had been studying brains—different types, including humans, Wraith and others she did not recognize—all preserved in a clear jelly-like matrix. Several were kept in jars displayed in the cabinets that surrounded the work area. Others were still within the partially exposed skulls of their original owners whose vacant eyes stared at her from heads mounted on three rows of translucent posts. She made herself examine each head to ensure that she recognized none of them. By the time she was done, her hunger had vanished, replaced by a difficult to control nausea. While not completely convinced, she reasoned that the time interval since her capture must have been too short to worry about the provenance of the brains in the jars. Most of them did not look human.

From that point on, each time she entered a new laboratory, Teyla was terrified that she would find some part of John that she would recognize. She was equally terrified that she would not recognize whatever bits remained of him.

The next ralbrak had its gloved arms immersed up to its first elbow-like joint in a splayed open chest cavity. The equipment in the room made so much noise that Teyla was not at all worried about being discovered when she zapped the ralbrak with the stun gun as it inserted colored wires into a beating heart. Only then she realized that the body strapped to the metal frame and invaded by a maze of tubes and wires was that of a Wraith. Even though she was standing right next to it, she could not sense the Wraith’s presence. She assumed that it was brain dead, but the ralbrak’s machines kept the body functioning. The modicum of pity she felt for the Wraith was a new and unwanted emotion.

At first impression when she peeked into the next laboratory, it looked like this ralbrak was preoccupied with the study of orbs. These floated within clear cylinders that were organized in the racks of a multi-tiered apparatus. The balls ranged in size from John’s beloved golf balls to that of a well ripened malgaradi, a large citrus fruit that alarmed Rodney because, while inedible to humans, it was commonly used to feed stock animals on many planets Atlantis traded with. Despite repeated, increasingly exasperated efforts, Carson had been unable to persuade Rodney that the meat from these animals was perfectly safe for him to eat. John’s insistence that it was delicious because it tasted like lemon chicken had not helped one bit.

She truly missed her teammates with their snarky comments, occasional whining, and all their other endearing peculiarities. They better have managed to remain alive long enough for her to rescue them.

Teyla reconsidered her first impression when the ball slipped off the hands of the ralbrak she had rendered unconscious with a hard whack to the back of the head. Instead of bouncing or rolling, the small sphere splattered onto the floor. With trepidation, Teyla examined the gelatinous mess. She found nothing familiar in the alien, dark orange gook. A close-up look at the contents of each large clear tube revealed eyes, dozens of eyes. She convulsively swallowed the bile that had come up her throat. While her hands worked on automatic to restrain the ralbrak with the last of her zip ties, her vision flickered from one eye to another to make sure that none were hazel.

This ralbrak she rolled into a fortuitously open storage closet. She closed the latch not at all worried about whether there would be sufficient air to sustain the creature.

A little later, too tired for kindness and convinced that these beings deserved none, she shoved the fourth ralbrak under its desk. The small room held nothing that she could use to cover the body. It probably did not matter that much. Someone was bound to soon notice the absence of the beings she had already encountered. The anger and contempt she felt for them were threatening to overwhelm her innate sense of caution.

What had attracted her attention when she scouted this room from the open entryway, were the screens that the ralbrak had been monitoring when she caught it by surprise. It was so engrossed in its work that she did not even have to use her stun gun in the traditional way. Instead, she clobbered it on the head and caught it as it slumped backwards off the stool it was perched on. Because she had exhausted her supply of zip ties, she tore up much of its clothing into thin strips to bind it.

At least there was nothing overtly stomach-churning in this laboratory. Just dozens of computer screens displaying silent scenes presumably with the purpose of monitoring activities in different sections of the ship. While intermittently glancing up at the doorway, she scanned the screens. Despite the horrific images she saw, her eyes did not linger on any single one. She had no time to waste trying to process the wildly imaginative cruelties the ralbrak were committing on all sorts of living creatures. That would come later—if she survived. Presently, she had to devote all her energy to locate John and map out an escape route.

Concerned that she had again stayed too long in one place, she began to slink away from the bank of screens. But something caught her eye—a mop of unruly, dark hair. She stared at the screen and her happiness at finding John shifted to horror as she grappled with what she was witnessing. The fact that he was naked did not surprise her one bit, given that she herself had been in that state until she found their clothes.

The shock came at everything else: his pallor, the dark bruises and the bloody wounds crisscrossing his body, the cruel metal device to which he was tightly restrained, and the ralbrak who appeared to be shouting at him as it wielded a long tool with multiple points. John’s lips moved in response. Teyla did not need to see the gleam in his eyes and tight set to his chin to know that he had said something defiant. How were they communicating? That question fled from her concerns when she saw what happened next.

The ralbrak lowered the tips of the tool along the crook of the elbow on John’s already injured arm. Despite the small dimension of the video feed, she saw John’s body tremble violently as he bit his lip. The ralbrak repeated the action several times on other sensitive areas. Lines of blood marked the trail of the torture implement.

The image brought up a flashback to the last time she had been a powerless witness to John being tortured. The spectacle of John gagged and tied to a chair while a Wraith fed on him—the way John’s eyes had bulged in pain and his features shriveled up as he aged—was one of those memories that she had learned to banish from her nightmares only recently, after many hours of meditation and the advent of more recent traumatic experiences.

But this time she was not powerless.

In order to liberate John, she had to determine where he was being held. If she were able to communicate with the ralbrak, she could easily capture one and force it to tell her where he was being held. But that was not an option.

She plied her eyes away from that screen and looked at the other images for clues to his whereabouts. The one he was being held in looked very similar to the other laboratories she had explored. Unless she had misjudged the size and organization of this vessel, it made sense that he would be held nearby. She had recognized a few of the rooms; they seemed to be displayed in a certain order.

She would find him. If anyone got in her way, that would be their last mistake.


	6. Chapter 6

John reached his limit. It wasn’t so much the accumulated pain. It was the fact that no matter how numb he felt, his body couldn’t take much more punishment before he would become too weak to act.

The brutalities that Worf had subjected him to had already made him pass out two, maybe three times. Each time, a spray of frigid water had startled him back to consciousness with protracted bouts of uncontrollable shivering. His upper left arm felt as if it was on fire. The ache in his chest went deeper than his cracked ribs and his breathing was out of whack, too fast and shallow despite his attempts to slow it down. His window of action was closing fast.

“I do appreciate all the pain receptor data that you are providing me, but you will soon die if you do not start answering my questions,” Worf said.

The SOB’s caustic spit sprayed John’s shoulder. He had been lucky so far that it had yet to hit him in the eyes; although, he was pretty sure that his right eyebrow was singed. Each spot struck by the spittle burned like a cigarette butt snuffed out on skin—a sensation that he was quite familiar with from a brief captivity in Afghanistan. That experience had been practically pleasant compared to this.

Worf ran the tip of the torture device, which looked like a pitchfork with seven flexible tines, from John’s hip bone down the thigh to the top of his knee. The device had a delayed effect with unpredictable variations. Not knowing what to expect made it impossible to steel himself in preparation. This time, the initial feather-light touch grew into a blistering heat that sank deep into his muscles and triggered waves of spasmodic cramps.

They went on and on.

John had cried out at some of his torturer’s previous ministrations partly on purpose, to let Worf believe that it was succeeding in breaking his will, and partly because he couldn’t help himself any longer. Now he let out a blue streak of curses and nasty epithets. He hoped the translator would do them justice.

“Remarkable responses.” The lack of inflection in the translator’s voice gave no clues as to whether Worf was referring to John’s colorful language or to the data. “I will let you live and set you free with your possessions, if you agree to provide information on your planet of origin. Your choice is simple. Share information and live; withhold information and die in excruciating pain.”

As he panted trying to catch his breath, John stared at Worf’s incongruous innocent looking eyes. How could someone who resembled an overgrown stuffed animal act with the cruelty to rival that of a Taliban interrogator and a Wraith Queen?

“What …what’re you going to do with the information?”

“The specifics are none of your concern. We are a scientific expedition and we are gatherers of knowledge. The information you have has value to us and we will compensate you for it by setting you free.”

“How generous of you,” John said. He had to constantly remind himself to play nice for now. It wasn’t the time, yet, to set free the wrath and anguish that churned in his gut whenever his thoughts dwelled on what Worf’s people had done to Teyla.

“That is true. It is a generous offer rarely given to a specimen. You are quite fortunate,” Worf said.

There was that word again, specimen. He was going to make it eat it. “Yeah, lucky, that’s me.”

After twisting something on the handle, maybe to change a setting, Worf raised the pitchfork and held it so that it hovered above John’s belly. Last time that area had been the target of its attention, John had convulsed over and over until he had begun to choke on his own vomit. The overwhelming taste and stink of bile (or was it the innards of his decomposing stomach lining?) were the last thing he remembered before he lost consciousness. A different feature of the tentacled vacuum vomit-cleaner had woken him up: small tendrils crept into his nostrils and cleaned or, rather, scoured his nasal passages. After they were done, the taste of blood had mingled with that of puke down his throat and mouth.

No wonder it wasn’t such a stretch to act terrified.

“Please don’t,” John said. “I—I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Worf brought down the middle tips of the instrument so that they touched his stomach. “You will tell me about your planet?”

This time John felt sharp zaps from an electric current. Shards of pain stabbed far underneath the superficially burned skin. He screamed.

“Stop! Yes, I’ll tell you about my planet.”

The bastard left the device on for a few more seconds. John shuddered. Bloodied saliva dribbled out of his mouth. He had avoided biting his tongue, but not the inside of his cheek.

“This is a warning. Do not lie or I will kill you in such a slow way as to make the past few hours seem like a pleasant interlude.”

The tremors still wracking through his body made it impossible for John to snap back with a witty retort. Probably a good thing. He couldn’t risk Worf changing his mind. This was a one shot deal.

“I’ll tell you what you want to know and—and you’ll let me go. Right?” he said in his best imitation of a humble, broken man.

“Yes. After you truthfully answer all our questions, we will release you on the nearest habitable planet that has one of those quaint Alteran stargates,” Worf said.

“Okay.” John didn’t believe a word it said, but that was fair. He was lying too.

Worf stepped out of John’s line of sight. It spoke to somebody. The translator was off again so John had no idea what it was up to. He hoped that his captor wasn’t calling reinforcements. Still completely immobilized, he couldn’t even turn his head to see what was going on.

The conversation, or at least Worf’s side of it, went on for a while. The change in inflection of its gruff voice made it sound as if the furry guy was getting annoyed. John had already acquired some experience recognizing the sounds a miffed Worf made. It had been a prelude to an escalation of his misery.

Something slammed and Worf clomped back to John’s left side. Without a word of explanation, it methodically unhooked half a dozen leads that had been glued to John’s temples and chest; then it unceremoniously pulled out various tubes that were inserted in or (in some cases) through his hand, feet, neck and other more private parts. John let off some hisses and moans—a few of them were not part of the act.

After a couple of loud clicks, the frame holding him pivoted, slowly raising his head and lowering his feet. The motion made him light headed. His vision got fuzzy. This was not the time to pass out again.

The mechanism halted once it brought him to a vertical position. The restraints, especially the ones on his upper body, dug into his already sore flesh and muscle. The bites of fresh pain snapped him out of this woozy state. To regain circulation, he curled and uncurled his fingers and toes, the only parts of his body that he could move.

His feet now touched the very cold floor. And for the first time, he could actually see his surroundings. Fully aware that soon the crap would hit the fan, he surveyed the layout of the visible portion of the room.

Right next to him, Worf sat on a high stool facing a large screen and what John supposed was the control panel for the rack that he was strapped to. Several steps away, two wide closed cabinets flanked a high bench set against the wall. The counter top was cluttered by neat rows of cylinders, flasks, tubes and bottles. The panel on the wall above them displayed a collection of devices and attachments that had to belong to the same family as Worf’s favorite torture implement. If one ignored the crazy color scheme, the furnishings screamed lab or, rather, lab/high-tech version of a medieval torture chamber.

Suddenly, John heard a low hum, like the short-circuiting of a transformer, followed by clacking steps coming from the side of the room that he couldn’t see because it was behind him. Damn it, Worf had called for reinforcements.

The newcomer was about half a foot shorter and a little stouter than Worf. Its fur and eyes were the same golden shade. For some reason, the pea green color of its tunic made John think of Kermit the Frog. _The_ _Muppet Show_ was one of the few things that had made his usually stern father laugh out aloud.

While it talked to Worf, Kermit stepped right in front of John. Calculating shrewdness  seeped through its friendly appearance. Like a rancher inspecting cattle at an auction, it sized him up from top to bottom before its gaze locked onto John’s face. John resisted his ingrained impulse to firmly meet its eyes. Instead, he cast his sight downwards to the floor and the freakish feet planted there a few steps away from him. Along the way he had noticed the small banana-shaped object that Kermit cradled in its hands. A weapon.

Maybe Kermit was the one who had killed Teyla. Or not. In the end, it didn’t matter. Given Worf and Kermit’s attitude, it seemed pretty clear that they were all in on it. John wanted to make as many of them as possible pay.

He hissed and flinched when, inevitably, spit hit his chest. That was a nice touch to round out his ongoing imitation of a weak, harmless man. Maybe not Oscar caliber, but hopefully good enough to fool arrogant aliens.

“We will release you from the restraints. You will not move until we tell you to. If you try anything belligerent, you will be punished,” the translator said.

John wasn’t sure who had spoken, but he pinpointed the device’s location to the flat top of a small cart that looked like a cubist version of R2-D2. Interesting.

With sharp snaps that pulled off hair from his chest, legs and arms, the bindings retracted sequentially, starting at the bottom with his ankles. John tried to prepare himself to control his sore, stiff limbs. He could do this. There would be no second chances.

As his legs bore more and more of his weight, his muscles started to tremble. This was not good at all; he felt as weak as a newborn puppy. When the last binding let go, he moaned, fluttered his eyelids, and crumpled to the floor. No easy feat pretending to be semi-conscious while lying on what felt like a sheet of ice. He hoped that it wasn’t cold enough for his flesh to stick to it. If Ronon and Rodney could see him in this state, they would be laughing their asses off.

He didn’t need the translation to understand that both Kermit and Worf were yelling at him to stand up. He gave it an honest effort and failed. Everything hurt.

Kermit stalked over and grabbed him by the bicep of his good arm. The guy had to be pretty strong to pull him up one handed. Its fingers certainly were as they dug in.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I just got dizzy. Could—could I have some water, please?” John said. He leaned into his captor’s body as he struggled to regain his footing.

“Weak, furless Alteran.” The translator did a remarkable job conveying Worf’s disgust while it stalked over to the nearby sink to fill a beaker with a clear liquid.

John took advantage of its distraction. He slammed his head backwards into Kermit’s snout at the same time as he rammed his left elbow into the middle of its chest. Kermit squeaked in protest, it probably didn’t have enough air in its lungs for anything louder. That move caused John no small amount of pain. He ignored it. In no time he had snagged the banana gun and put Kermit into a tight chokehold. The creature had more fur, bones, and body fat than muscle.

“Are you mad? We had an agreement.” Worf took a step towards them, its outrage quite clear despite its alien features. “Release g’Havarld immediately.”

“Don’t move any closer or your friend dies.” John stuck the muzzle of the weapon into Kermit’s side. It looked simple enough to operate, but he wasn’t sure if it was set to kill, stun or what. He was also worried about making noise. Worst case scenario, he’d use the manual method to enact his threat. Given the feel of Kermit’s scrawny neck, it shouldn’t take too much work to break it. With the pent-up anger now surging through him, it would be easy. So easy.

Lo and behold, Worf actually obeyed John’s command. Sort of. It stopped walking, but it began to raise its empty hand. John didn’t know what it was planning to do, but he expected the worst. He put more pressure on Kermit’s neck. It emitted an appropriately alarming gurgling noise.

“I said, don’t move a muscle.”

Worf got the message to drop the hand and play statue. The mouth, though, kept on going. “What do you hope to gain? You will not leave this ship alive.”

“We’ll see about that,” John said. No reason to explain that escape was not at the top of his priority list.

His plan (if it even deserved that name) had been simple: kill Kermit first and then Worf, maybe a tad more slowly—make them pay for Teyla’s murder. He hadn’t thought it out any further. But now that he was on the verge of bringing it to fruition, he hesitated. With its body smashed against his, he could feel Kermit quivering in fear. The guy, girl, or whatever, was petrified. That emotion required no translation. And it wasn’t fighting him anymore—its death would be an execution. Worf would probably put up more of a fight, but John had it already pegged as another untrained non-combatant; even in the shape John was in (and it was bad), he was sure that he could finish the job.

But then what? He had no info on the ships schematics. He imagined himself aimlessly rampaging through the corridors of the ship, armed only with Worf’s torture device and Kermit’s silly looking weapon, both of which he didn’t know how to use. Most likely, with the element of surprise, he would be able to kill a few before they killed him. Probably just a tiny fraction of the number of scientists and crew that inhabited the ship—not enough to put a halt to their beyond cruel experiments.

He also had other things to consider.  He had already lost Teyla, but maybe, just maybe, Ronon and Rodney were still alive, and they could use help. And then there was John’s responsibility to his people back in Atlantis. He could not fail them too. The odds of him escaping this ship were stacked against him, but that had never stopped him before. Time for a new plan.

“Take off your lab coat,” he said to Worf.

“I do not understand.”

“It’s simple, remove the long-sleeved thing you are wearing, and place it on the floor.” To preempt any complaints, John shoved the muzzle deeper into Kermit’s side. “Do it quickly or your buddy gets it.”

One positive thing about Worf: it did appear to have a strong sense of loyalty towards its colleague. Without any more complaints, Worf ran its fingers through an invisible seam in the front of the coat and took it off, letting it drop to the floor. John was pleased to see that the fur pretty much covered everything; he had no interest whatsoever in learning anything about their … anatomy. He did have a high interest in learning about the weapon. Based on Worf and Kermit’s reaction, he figured that it was either set on kill or on something very painful.

“Good. Now stand with your back against the rack. Arms and feet in the proper position. g’Havarkat will show me how to operate it.”

While he kept Kermit in a firm headlock, John forced it to walk to the control panel of the rack. After a few additional threats and terse instructions, John had Worf firmly bound in much the same way he had been strung up.

“What do you intend to do?” Worf said.

“You’ll find out soon enough.” John waved the gun. “Now, shut up until I tell you to or I will use you for target practice.”

One immediate threat down, one more to go before he could take a minute to regroup. He desperately needed that minute. His arm was bleeding, staining Kermit’s lab coat with dark maroon splotches. Pretty much every movement he made hurt one or more parts of his body. And how could he feel hot and cold at the same time? He had to find his gear and get some drugs from his first aid pack, something to keep him going, or he was going to collapse before he could accomplish his goals.

Sensing his failing strength, Kermit wiggled in his hold. John countered by pushing the gun back into its side.

“Don’t even think it,” he said. Then, worried that the sentiment would not be translated properly, he added, “If you move again, I’ll kill you.”

That’s when he heard the faint buzzing sound he had learned to associate with doors opening in this ship. Great, more company. He adjusted his hold on Kermit and turned to face the doorway.

It seemed like another change of plan was in order.


	7. Chapter 7

Teyla had cleared laboratory after laboratory (and a few storage closets) without encountering further signs of John. While she had passed unseen near several crewmembers, a few had noticed her presence. Thus, she had left behind a trail of more bound-up or otherwise incapacitated ralbraks.

Brute force was not her preferred mode of action, but sometimes there was no better option. And given the animosity she harbored towards these creatures, dishing out a little pain had felt unexpectedly good.

Every second that ticked by, she expected to hear the blare of an alarm to indicate that one or more of her victims had been discovered and that the hunt was on for her. She wanted to move faster, but she could not afford any chance of discovery now that she was certain that what was on the line was not only her life but also John’s. The disparate calls to hurry and be cautious were fraying her nerves.

John had to be somewhere nearby. He had to be. Unless this spaceship was much bigger than she had imagined. Or he was not on this ship at all.

The video images of John she had seen could have been transmitted from another location. A sister ship perhaps. It could even have come from a base on a planet or a space station. Had she been foolishly optimistic? Why had she not previously considered these other possibilities? This awful realization almost stopped her on her tracks, but she was too well trained to let her wandering mind distract her from her intended purpose.

Three more doors to check before she would have to come up with a plan to furtively access another part of the ship.

After she verified that this auxiliary corridor remained empty, she left the relative safety of one doorway and walked across to the next door. In hand she had a broken off appendage from one of those ubiquitous automated carts she had encountered during her search. She had been using the appendage to trigger the unlock mechanism of the closed entryways. This was the solution that she had conjured up on the fly after her frustrating failed attempts at activating the entry pads with her fingers. Ronon and John would have been impressed by her ingenuity. Rodney would have found it inelegant and needlessly destructive.

At the echoing clacks of loud footsteps, by now too familiar, she backed away from the closed doorway that she was about to open and hid around the next corner. She tucked the appendage back inside her vest and pulled out the Wraith stunner. Given that it was quieter than the P90 and handgun, it was her weapon of choice at the moment.

The two approaching ralbraks looked different from the ones she had caught working in the labs. These ones wore identical purple tunics cinched at the waist by a wide utility belt which was festooned with multiple holsters and pouches. Each ralbrak held a short, stubby curved object in its left hand. They were armed guards or soldiers. They would not be as easy to overpower as the scientists.

Despite being perfectly aware that her situation had just become more dangerous, Teyla felt a surge of optimism. She suspected that she had found John. Plenty of precedent bolstered her conjecture that he most likely would be at the center of a trouble spot.

The door slid open. As soon as the ralbrak guards entered the room, she silently traversed the short distance and crouched low so that she could peek inside the still open doorway.

She recognized the room. But it was not John strapped to the restraints. It was the ralbrak that had been torturing him. She had no time to further process the strange scene playing in front of her. She reacted.

She slipped inside just before the door panels shut. As one armed guard turned to face her, she zapped it with a stunner burst to the chest. It crumbled to the floor without firing its weapon. She rolled sideways to avoid the narrow blue beams shot by the other guard who had taken cover behind a cart to avoid her return blasts.

While the two of them exchanged fire, another blue beam shot from behind the ralbrak restrained to the rack. It hit the guard solidly in the back of the head. Without uttering a sound, the ralbrak pitched forward and slumped to the ground. Rivulets of a thick, amber liquid seeped through the fur at the back of its skull and pooled on the floor around the still body.

The bound ralbrak began to make loud grating sounds that no human could have made. She silenced it with the stunner at the same time as a mechanical voice emanating from one of the objects on the cart said, “What have you done? You cannot...”

Two figures rose up from their hiding spot on the far side of the bound ralbrak. With a steady, very human arm, one of them held a ralbrak weapon aimed at the head of the ralbrak, dressed in a bright green tunic, who stood trembling in front of him.

“Oh, God. Teyla? Is that really you?” John said in a raw, hoarse voice.

About a day’s worth of beard scruff shadowed his pale, drawn cheeks—the first indicator of how long they had been held captive. There were smears of blood under his nose and around his mouth. More blood, fresh and dried, covered a large swatch on his upper left arm. Scattered crusted welts and dark bruises marred his neck, arm, and shoulders. The ralbrak blocked the view to the rest of his body.

“Yes, John, it is I. I am so glad to see you. It was quite a challenge to find you,” she said, almost giddy with relief from not having arrived too late. While presently they remained in grave danger, at least they were finally together.

“I—I thought you were dead.” John glared at the unconscious, strapped down ralbrak. “Worf said its crony killed you.”

“It tried and failed.” Teyla stopped her impulse to go over to him, ostensibly to check his injuries but in truth she wanted to embrace him. “I will tell you the full tale later. We must hurry.”

“Right,” he said. He seemed a little unsteady on his feet as he and his hostage stepped closer to her. “Uh, are those my pants?”

“Yes, I found your clothes together with mine. These people are collectors of a sort.” With one hand still firmly holding the stunner, she untied the trousers from around her waist. “I will take care of your friend while you get dressed.”

“Okay. Kermit here is going to be very cooperative.” John pushed the weapon into its neck fur. “Kneel and put your hands behind your head. You better do everything she says if you want to continue to live.”

Without objecting, the ralbrak obeyed John’s commands. Teyla grabbed the translator device from the cart before she took control of their prisoner.

“John, your undergarment is in the leg pocket.” She discretely did not look in his direction. She forced the ralbrak to lie on its stomach on the floor and she placed the translator next to its head.

“Thanks,” John said.

“You are quite welcome.” She secured the ralbrak’s hands behind its back with strips of the blue tunic she had found on the floor. She removed the comm unit from the ralbrak’s ear and tucked it away in one of her pockets, thinking that they might find some use for it later. She pulled out the combat knife from her leg holster and showed it to the ralbrak.

“You will tell me how to operate this or I will cut off your fingers one by one.” She waited for the translator to work. The wide-eyed look it gave her indicated that the message had gotten through even before it began to speak.

“Do not hurt me. I will tell you what you want to know. Press the left nob to turn it on or off. Turn the top dial to adjust the volume.”

Teyla followed its instructions to make sure it was being truthful.

“Wow, Teyla, I’m impressed.” John said.

“There is no time to waste in politeness.” She gagged the ralbrak with well-practiced motions. The subdued creature stared fixedly at the nearby corpse.

“Do not move until I tell you to or I assure you that what I do to you will be much worse than what your associate did to my companion.” She emphasized the point by pressing her knee into its back before she stood up. She turned off the translator and slipped it into a tac vest pocket.

Suddenly, a disquieting notion occurred to her. How could she have forgotten the video feed? She studied the ceiling of the room on the doorway side. According to her best recollection, she estimated this to be the origin angle of the video she had seen in the monitoring room. She hoped that destroying the surveillance equipment might buy them some more time before their inevitable discovery.

Her search was futile.

Nothing stood out from the uniform appearance of the mirrored panels that lined both the ceiling and wall. She almost felt like waving at whoever might be spying on them. Quite possibly someone had already found the ralbrak she had incapacitated in the monitoring room. Or perhaps the video feed had garnered the attention of a crewmember viewing it from a different location on the ship. In either case, at any moment she expected more guards to rush through the door to kill or apprehend them, or noxious gases to stream through the vents and knock them into oblivion.

They were running out of time.

She proceeded to disarm and restrain the unconscious guard. Carefully avoiding stepping into the congealed brownish puddles, she picked up the dead guard’s weapons and tossed aside both of their comm units. With the gore and the multiple bodies, alive and dead, there was no chance of hiding the evidence of their passing.

She heard John catch his breath. He muttered something unintelligible.

“Do you require assistance?” she asked.

“No,” he said, sounding a little breathless. “What’s with the hole punches?”

“I do not know.” She took a surreptitious glance in his direction.

He faced away from her. Thankfully, he had pulled up his trousers past his hips and was buttoning them up. She was also glad to see that he had already applied to his wounded arm one of the emergency dressings he kept in the left cargo pocket. Those bandages were cleverly designed to be used one handed.

More contusions and bloody puncture marks covered his back; three particularly worrisome welts were precisely spaced along his spine. They were swollen and surrounded by a ring of blisters, like those produced by cauterization. With anger welling up in her chest, her eyes roamed from the still senseless ralbrak that had so cruelly hurt John to the instrument of torture that lay on the nearby counter. The things she might do if she only had the time.

John pulled her away from her dark fantasy. “Hey, Teyla? The naked part doesn’t go on our mission reports, okay?”

“Agreed,” she said, instantly cheered up. She took it as an indicator that John believed that they would see Ronon and Rodney again—the two people who would endlessly tease him (but not her) about the nudity. His belief made her a believer too. And she would do everything in her power to make this hope come true. Striving to ensure her friends’ survival was much more important than exacting revenge.

She sat on the edge of the uncomfortable ralbrak stool to pull off John’s socks from her double-socked feet. As soon as her feet touched the floor again she missed the extra insulating layer. Too bad she had not found a way to bring their boots. She handed him the socks. While she kept watch on the door and their prisoner, he took over her spot on the stool. His body pitched forward as he leaned over to wiggle his toes into the first sock. She grasped his right shoulder just in time to stop his fall. He whimpered in pain. She felt the heat emanating from him. He was feverish.

“Crap. I’m a little dizzy,” he said.

“It is alright. Let me help you. You watch the ralbrak.” She finished pulling up the one sock he had started and then she moved on to the next. His feet were like blocks of ice. She noted the blue tinge to the nail bed of his toes. She hoped that he did not have frost bite.

“Ralbrak? Is that their name?”

“That is my name for them.”

“I named mine after a Klingon and a Muppet. Yours is better.”

She enjoyed the playful conversation, but everything was taking too long. While her bright idea to wear John’s clothes had kept her warm, it made it too time consuming for her to return his shirts and jacket to him.

“I am sorry, John. The rest of your clothes will have to wait. We must leave now.”

“I know, but hand me the tac vest,” he said as he stood up from the stool.

“Are you sure? Your back…”

“Please, I’m freezing,” he said.

She unzipped John’s tac vest and handed it to him, relieved to be free of the extra weight on her shoulders. Instead of immediately putting it on, he dug into one of the side compartments and pulled out a small block of C-4. From another compartment he removed a digital timer.

“How many of those do you have?” she asked. He might be sick but he was still well enough to think strategically. The two of them might very well pull off this escape.

“Three sets plus a couple of grenades and flash bangs. At some point, we’re going to need distractions.” He placed the C-4 in the second drawer underneath his torturer’s computer console.

With clumsy movements he got his bad arm through the armhole. Without saying anything, she went over to help him. He was shivering and gasped when the vest settled on his back. She reached inside her front tac vest pocket, the one that held the medical supplies.

“You know there’s no time for that,” he said.

She found the packet with the pain relievers and antibiotics. Broad spectrum, dear Carson had called the later when he had explained their function to her. “No time to properly tend to your injuries, but enough for you to take these.”

Without even the prelude of an eye roll, he took the pills and popped them into his mouth. He chased them down with a gulp of water from the proffered canteen.

“Thanks.”

“You are welcome,” she said. “When I was looking for you, I found a few secluded areas where we might hide for a short time while we decide on a plan of action.”

“Great. Let’s take Kermit. We could use some intel on this ship,” John said.

She handed John his P90 and one of the Wraith stunners. She pulled up their prisoner and forced it to walk in front of them, as a sort of living shield. Ralbrak gun ready, John covered her when she opened the door and checked the corridor.

“It is clear,” she said. “Wait here. I will scout around the corner.”

“Okay,” he said.

Was his easy compliance an indicator of how badly he felt or of the trust he had in her? Probably both, she thought.

She had taken three steps into the corridor when she heard his whisper. “Teyla wait. I forgot I’ve the LSD.”

By the time she returned to the entryway, he held the familiar life sign detector in his hand. She too had not remembered that he kept it in his tac vest. She was disappointed in herself. John had been tortured. What was her excuse?

“Is the coast clear?” she asked, fairly certain that she had used the appropriate colloquialism.

“Yes,” he said, a grin brightened his exhausted face. The grin turned to a frown. “Crap, no. Three blips incoming.”


	8. Chapter 8

John blamed himself for not having remembered to use the LSD sooner. The three moving blips were just around the corner from where Teyla had been heading. That could have been a disaster. He was clearly not firing on all cylinders. Hopefully, the pills that Teyla had encouraged him to swallow would kick in soon and at least take the edge off his pounding headache, if not also tone down the fever, chills, and throbbing back and arm.

For now, John and Teyla did the only thing they could. They retreated back to Worf’s chamber of horrors and shut the doorway. Teyla pushed Kermit to the left and forced it to its knees behind a cabinet. John took a similar position on the right. Not enough time to come up with a real plan. They would have to rely on the element of surprise for a good old fashioned ambush.

Eyes fixed on the LSD screen, John held up his hand within Teyla’s line of sight and counted down with his fingers to mark the timing of the arrival of their newest guests. At zero, the door slid open and three purple-clad ralbrak walked in, weapons ready. They appeared to be momentarily mystified at the sorry sight of the still unconscious Worf strapped down on the torture rack. With the translator off, John had no idea what they were saying. If he had felt better, he might have enjoyed imagining their rapid fire conversation, much like watching one of the original Godzilla movies without the subtitles.

He gave Teyla the signal. They fired their stunners simultaneously, each taking down one of the ralbraks. They both hit the third one while it spun around to face them. Before he moved from his position, John glanced down at the LSD, relieved to see no other blips in their vicinity on this deck. He itched to know more about the layout of this ship, but he had no the time to play around with the zoom and other meager features of the LSD.

“Let’s go, the coast is clear.” On the way toward the exit, he grabbed the ralbraks’ weapons, but didn’t stop to tie them up. They had to get the hell out of this room.

“Wait.” Teyla pulled out a squiggle-shaped piece of metal from one of her pockets and dumped it on the floor. “It’s Kermit’s comm. I thought it might be useful, but I am concerned that it might have a locator.”

“Good thinking,” he said. In their situation, paranoia was one of the keys to survival.

She prodded the still compliant Kermit to walk in front of her. John hadn’t noticed when she had found the time to gag it. He loved and respected all of the members of his team, but Teyla was so easy to work with. The two of them were mostly on the same wavelength in these do-or-die situations, and she didn’t need to be prodded like Rodney or restrained like Ronon.

While Kermit’s loud steps might be an asset, its voice definitely was not. If other crewmembers heard the sound of one their own walking down the hallways, they might not get suspicious until they were in range of their stunners. This approach might work until news spread among its crewmates that they had taken Kermit hostage. Fortunately, they had no need to put this theory to the test. The LSD gave them enough of a heads up to avoid running into anyone else. Although, one time they barely had enough time to duck into a mechanical closet before a couple of ralbraks crossed their path. Packed like sardines and completely smothered by Kermit’s noxious body odor, John had to use every trick he knew to control his nausea during the couple of minutes they spent in that cramped space.

By the time they slipped into the relatively remote, empty room that Teyla had scouted out, he was winded. He had no problem ignoring the pulsing ache in his wounded arm, but with every step he took it felt as if someone was drilling huge holes into his spine. That agony and the constant shivers made it hard for him to catch his breath. _Buck up and don’t lose sight of the LSD_ , he repeatedly told himself. The screen showed no blips in their vicinity on this deck, but there were some unmoving ones not too far below them—fifteen life signs lined up in three rows. Maybe crew sleeping bunks.

He remembered what had been bugging him about the weapon in his hand. His brain was working way too slow. “Teyla, where did you get the Wraith stunners?”

“One I took from an unconscious Wraith immediately after it was beamed aboard and the others from the same chamber where I found our clothes and weapons.” She was using several strips of blue cloth to secure Kermit against one of the many thick pipes that lined two of the walls in the small room. “There were rows of shelves stocked with the gear they had removed from their captives. Much of it was Wraith.”

Kermit’s head kept on swiveling from him to Teyla, like a Muppet watching a tennis match.

“So some of their so-called specimens are Wraith?” These ralbraks must have serious tech and security measures to keep Wraith around like lab rats.

“Yes, many of them are. I encountered six captive Wraith and there were … parts of many others. What I saw made what the Wraith do appear benign.” Sadness etched her tired face. “John, I almost felt pity for them.”

“Almost is the operative word there.” He used a sarcastic tone to lighten the mood. He hated seeing her look so haunted. His eyes darted back to the LSD. It showed some activity about one hundred meters away from their current position, right at the boundary of its range. The fifteen life signs below them hadn’t moved at all. His gut was telling him that those were more specimens not crew members.

Teyla finished checking her knots. “The only reason why I woke up was because there was a Wraith next to me. Its presence saved my life.”

“I’m glad.” He wanted to know all the details about what happened to her, but they had more urgent things to deal with. “Do you sense any Wraith near us?”

Teyla tilted her head, as if she were listening to something. “It’s very faint, but there are several below us and others not far from the room where you were. I cannot be certain because some of the ralbrak equipment completely masks the Wraith from my perceptions.”

He was sure that she would have told him if she had, but he still had to ask. “Did you see any signs of Ronon and McKay?”

“No, I did not. Ours was the only Atlantis gear I found.” She pulled out her med kit from one of the pockets of her tac-vest. “I need to treat your back and then you will put on your shirts.”

“Teyla, we don’t have time,” he said. The stern look she gave him warned him that he had lost the argument before it even started.

She reached over and gently tugged down the zipper of his vest. “We must make time or you will collapse before we have a chance to accomplish our escape.”

He noticed the smudges of dried blood on her right hand and the fresh scab between her middle and pointer finger. No need to ask what had caused those. He had several matching ones that were still bleeding a tad. “How about you, are you hurt?”

“Only a few scrapes and bruises. Nothing serious,” she said.

John placed his weapons on a stool and accepted her help in easing the vest off his shoulders. He held on to the LSD. To brace himself from the expected pain, he put his free hand on the counter of the large machine occupying most of the room. It looked like a Star Trek transporter console had grown a backstop made up of half a dozen shiny car mufflers standing up on their outlet ends. John was careful not to touch any of the knobs and multicolored buttons.

He didn’t ask her how bad his back looked and she didn’t volunteer the information.

“Give me a sitrep on the ship, please,” he said.

While she described what she’d seen, he kept his eyes fixed on the LSD screen, willing there not to be any incoming blips. She tried her best to avoid hurting him as she taped swatches of gauze pads onto various ultra-sensitive spots on his back. In turn, he chewed on his lower lip and kept himself from recoiling under her touch. He concentrated on parsing out the info that they could use to plan their escape. The fact that the ship had some type of beaming technology worried him. If they had biometric internal sensors the ralbrak might be able to locate them and transport them directly to a secure location. But then, wouldn’t they have done it already? Plus, according to Teyla’s description, it sounded like the ralbrak beaming technology was more primitive than the Asgard’s because it appeared to work only between a transmitter and a receiver device. Or maybe they didn’t have internal sensors because they never had security problems. Until now.

“Judging by the number of control buttons on the transporter I was in, there are at least three decks,” Teyla said. “This one appears to be significantly longer and wider than the one where I woke up.”

“With a ship this size, there’s got to be escape pods and at least a couple of transport shuttles,” he said. One of those would offer the best scenario for their escape. An alternative would be to hijack the ship, but he couldn’t imagine how the two of them could pull that off.

“I agree.” She tapped his shoulder. “I am done, John. I hope that it will make you more comfortable until we can get you proper medical attention.”

“Thanks, Teyla.” He wearily straightened himself out and turned around. He rubbed his arm to warm up, his skin crawled with goose bumps. “My guess is that you didn’t see any vessel schematics conveniently posted on the walls of the elevator or hallways?”

“Sadly, no.” Teyla had already removed one of the two shirts of his that she had been wearing over her own clothes. She began to unsnap the second one.

“Too bad. The LSD is pretty useless for mapping structural features,” he said.

After she handed him the shirts, she retrieved the translator from her pocket and grabbed her knife from the leg holster. “I shall talk to Kermit while you get dressed. I believe that I will be able to persuade it to share some information with us.”

And persuade she did.

By the time John had managed to stuff himself into his shirts and tac-vest, Teyla had found out some interesting things. One third of the ship’s complement was kept in stasis at any given time. Awake on this shift were ten scientists, twenty technicians and other support staff, and thirty crewmembers, twenty of the latter were military. Each deck of the ship was equipped with escape pods. However, these were not only keyed to the ralbraks’ biologic signatures, but they were also preprogrammed to place the passengers into cryogenic stasis prior to beginning their very slow return journey to a nexus in a neighboring galaxy. The return trip to their home base might take over a thousand years depending on how quickly the pod’s automated distress signal was detected and the pod recovered. These pods were definitely scratched out of their escape plans. The good news was that there were no internal sensors to track individuals within the ship. That technology was too expensive to install in such a large ship, especially given the strict measures used to restrain and incapacitate all specimens.

“How many transport shuttles do you have and where are they located?” Teyla asked.

“Four. All of them are on the flight deck which is at the aft of deck one,” Kermit said with no hesitation.

“Where are we located?” Teyla said.

“This room is at the aft of deck two,” Kermit said.

“What other specimens did your people grab on the same planet where you found us?” John said.

“In addition to you two, we acquired ten Wraith. They provide excellent material for a wide array of studies,” it said.

“No one else? No one like us,” John said.

“No.”

John went to stand right in front of Kermit. He just couldn’t get a read on the creature. “Are you sure that it’s not lying?”

“I believe not. I was quite clear about the consequences.” Teyla wiped the edge of her knife on her pants. As part of her persuasion tactic, she had made shallow cuts at the base of two of the ralbrak’s fingers. Not even as deep as paper cuts, they couldn’t possibly have hurt that much. But, judging by Kermit’s quick reversal in its initial refusal to answer her questions, the baby-level torture plus her masterfully creepy act had easily transcended all interspecies communication barriers and the dulling effects of the robotic-sounding translator.

“I am telling you the truth,” Kermit said. “I am a xenobiologist, not a soldier. My duty is to study specimens not prevent their escape. If others had not failed in their responsibilities, I would not have been placed in the position to have to barter for my own very valuable life.”

“So, if we contact the captain and threaten your very valuable life, will your people let us go?” John said.

Kermit took a few seconds to answer. “No, they would not.”

“Not so valuable after all,” John said.

“Tell me, why do you capture, torture and dissect other sentient species?” Teyla said. “You would gain so much more in knowledge and, perhaps, even natural resources and other trade goods, if you used a more benign approach with those who do not attack you first. We are not like the Wraith.”

“The Wraith are little more than animals and you are their food,” Kermit said. “Your inferior individual brains and your primitive cultures hold no knowledge or other things that would be of any interest to us. We are The People and God created the universe to be our test and playground. To become closer to God, we must explore, catalog, and study all its creations.”

After a second of confusion, Teyla recomposed her serene expression. In a swift move, she pressed the flat of the blade against Kermit’s neck. “Maybe, you will soon have the opportunity to tell your God that some of us object to your study methodology.”

“Okay, kids. Let’s skip the theological debate,” John said. But before he could move the line of questioning back to more practical matters, he noticed the approaching stop-and-go movements of a quartet of blips visible on the left edge of the LSD screen. “Crap, they’ve started a room to room search. I don’t want us to get trapped here.”

Teyla studied the LSD screen and pointed to a spot on the right side of their own blips. “I have explored this area. There is an elevator only a few doors from here.”

“Good, we’ve got a plan.” He grabbed the Wraith gun and stunned the ralbrak with a triple dose smack in the middle of its chest. “We can’t take Kermit with us.”

“And we cannot take the chance that it will confess to the guards what it had to tell us to protect its miserable life.”

“Right,” he said. “We’re going to make a run for the elevator when the search party goes into the next room. You lead. I’ll be at your six. Okay?”

“Agreed.” Stunner in one hand and nifty elevator trigger in the other, she got into ready position next to the door.

Lo and behold, less than a minute later they made it inside the elevator without being noticed. Maybe, just maybe, their luck might hold out a little longer. To help move things in the right direction, John left a block of C-4 all cozied up with a timer and neatly tucked behind a panel he had momentarily loosened.

“Let’s go find us a shuttle home.” He showed the LSD screen to Teyla and stepped into the hallway.

Game on.


	9. Chapter 9

As she followed John out of the elevator into the deck-one corridor, Teyla forced aside the distracting thoughts of self-recrimination that were squabbling in her head. She should not have lost her temper with Kermit, but her blood had practically boiled over when it had used its belief in a deity to justify its abominable actions. She had wanted to scare the furry creature into feeling at least a speck of remorse or humility. But despite how good it had felt to see it quake in fear, it had been a waste of her and John’s valuable time.

“Let’s stick to the Wraith stunners and the ralbrak’s banana guns,” John said over his shoulder. They were advancing cautiously through the corridor, hugging the left side of the wall. “Not worth the risk of bullets ricocheting off these metal plates.”

“Alright.” She already held one of each weapon in her hands. Neither required a two-handed grip, a definite advantage over the P90. Although the more destructive properties of the later might begin to quench her thirst to wreak as much havoc as possible to this space vessel and its crew.

She took another glance back at the corridor that extended four stargate widths from the elevator door they had just left. No one was at their heels. The six entrances they had passed remained shut.

“There’re life signs on the other side of the doors,” John said. “Maybe, they’re keeping the civilians in lockdown.”

“That would be a wise precaution,” she said. In the silence of the hall, their whispered conversation sounded inordinately loud. “They are not broadcasting an alarm or other ship-wide communication. They must rely heavily on personal comm devices.”

“Yeah, Worf was chatty on its comm unit.” The drawl of in John’s voice oozed bitterness.

While Teyla had given him a brief summary of all that she had seen and done since she awoke in the lowest deck of the ship, John had told her nothing of his experiences. Through the video monitor, she must have seen only a mere glimpse of what that ralbrak had put him through. She had no idea how long he had been tortured, let alone for what reason he had been chosen for this special treatment. She strongly suspected that it had something to do with his ATA gene and Ancestor heritage. That seemed to be a theme common to the kinds of trouble that preferentially latched on to him. John had also not had the time to describe how he had managed to get himself free, take one ralbrak hostage, and, most fittingly, place his torturer in the restraints that had held him down.

John suddenly stopped. He raised his left arm, elbow bent, hand clenched in a fist—the signal to halt. He dropped down to one knee. She mimicked his stance with a little more grace.

“Four blips in the elevator behind us and six moving on the other side of that.” John pointed to their destination, a closed bulwark across the corridor. Hopefully, it opened into or near the shuttle bay.

He stuck his ralbrak gun into the side of his tac vest. Eyes never darting away from the life sign detector in the palm of his left hand, he retrieved a grenade from a compartment and handed it to her.

“Can you throw it when they open the bulkhead?”

He left unsaid that, because of his injuries, he did not feel confident that he could make the throw himself. She did not need to ask him if he was in pain. The grit of his jaw and the lines around his eyes and mouth told the story. One of John’s many fine qualities was that he never inflated his abilities to perform a task while on the job. When lives were in danger, he always held realistic expectations for himself and for those under his command. That was one reason why they had, thus far, managed to survive so many dangerous situations.

She estimated the distance and judged it to be well within her range. “It will not be a problem. But an explosion might trigger the closing of breach containment shields between compartments. We will have to run for it.” She had learned much from lunchtime chats with Laura Cadman and the other female soldiers under John’s command. No matter how far flung the galaxy and planet of their births might be, women enjoyed conversations about a disparate range of topics, often linked together by threads that would leave most men dumbfounded because they tended to think more linearly.

John withdrew one of the C-4 detonators from another compartment of his tac vest. “I’d rather risk that than be stuck in the middle of a crossfire with nothing to use as cover.”

“Agreed.” There was no use dwelling on how slim their chances of survival were with either option.

“Wait until one or two of them come through, then launch it over their heads.” John palmed the detonator in his hand. “Hopefully, the C-4 in the elevator won’t punch through the outer hull. I’d hate to be sucked out into space.”

“It might be more pleasant than what they have planned if they catch us.”

“That’s not happening,” he said. “Ready?”

“Yes.” While she maintained pressure on the grenade’s safety lever, she removed the safety clip and pin.

The long barrel of a weapon peaked through the partially open bulkhead entrance, immediately followed by a guard wielding what appeared to be bigger version of the banana guns. Another similarly armed guard moved a step behind the first one.

“I’ll cover you.” John fired sweeps of blue laser from his ralbrak gun. The first guard staggered backwards into its companion before either of them could fire. “Now!”

She rose up and threw the small explosive device. The corridor ceiling was tall enough to allow for a reasonable trajectory. She ducked back down at the same time that John must have triggered the C-4 detonator.

Bright red flames and an acrid smoke shot out from both blast sites.

The concussive sounds from the elevator explosion swept up from the other end of the corridor and met up with that from the grenade blast, echoing back and forth. The whole ship shuddered under her feet. A high pitched horn blared and paused at regular intervals, seven seconds by her count. Jets of pinkish froth sprayed out from small, star-shaped nozzles that protruded at the midline of the mirrored ceiling panels. A gob of foam fell on John’s matted-down hair and slid down his forehead.

He wiped it away with his sleeve. “Fire retardant,” he said.

The playful gleam in his eyes told her that some had also fallen on her hair, which hung around her face in a tangled mess—the clips she used to keep it up had not been with her clothes. At least, the loose hair kept her neck warm.

Without waiting to be asked, she grabbed John’s good arm and used her own momentum to help him stand up. She took his six and kept a steady stream of ralbrak gun fire behind them while they ran down the corridor. By the time they reached their destination, the return fire had sputtered to silence.

Around the area of the grenade explosion, mirrored panels littered the floor. Even though they had not shattered, she and John avoided stepping on them with their socked feet. They also tried their best to skirt around the mess produced by the body of the ralbrak John had shot and the scattered remains of the other one. Apparently, the latter had tried to rise to its feet right before the explosion decapitated it and tore its torso into unrecognizable chunks.

The ugly taste of bile rose in her throat. She had been in many combat situations and she had killed before, but never in such a gruesome fashion.

Fortunately for them, there had been no automated lockdown of compartments. When they reached the still open bulkhead entry, John clutched her sleeve to stop her. After he tucked the Wraith gun under his arm pit, he pulled out the LSD.

“Two moving blips, both at two o’clock.” John had to shout to be heard over the commotion made by the horn. He put the LSD away and adjusted his grip on the ralbrak gun.

“I shall take the left one,” she said.

“Let’s do it.”

They burst through the entrance firing at their designated spots. Her target slammed backwards against a wall and slid to the floor. Its purple uniform and fur were drenched by yellow-orange blood that poured out of the gaping wound in its chest.

John had hit the other ralbrak in the shoulder. It wiggled on the floor in an attempt to reach for the weapon that had fallen from its grasp. With the ball of her foot, she swept the gun out of its reach. The gun slid into a puddle of blood, shredded fur, and entrails—parts of the two dismembered corpses that also decorated the floor and walls of this antechamber, which was only a few steps wider and longer than her quarters in Atlantis.

Her stomach wanted to revolt, but she would not let it. No time for weakness. One small consolation was that, oddly enough, the dead ralbraks smelled no worse than the live ones. Either that or the natural stench of this vessel and its inhabitants had completely dulled her olfactory sense.

She put a foot on the back of the live ralbrak and shifted her weight to it. The tears to the back of its uniform revealed bloody shrapnel wounds. It hollered either in pain or in anger, or both. She exerted more pressure and it stopped its movements. She pulled out the stunner.

“Teyla, wait. We might need it to open this.” John pointed to a control panel on the left of the second set of bulkhead doors. “I’m pretty sure your magic wand won’t work.”

She rotated her stance so that she could look towards John and keep an eye on the fallen guard. The panel had no visible buttons to press. It was a smooth, black oval surface decorated along its middle by a foot long, vertical pink line which was crisscrossed near the top by three horizontal lines of the same color. “It is a different design from the elevator and door control panels I managed to open before.”

John hovered the palm of his hand over the shape. “I think it’s a biometric scanner. We’ll need your new friend to give us a hand.”

“It is eager to help us,” Teyla said.

Together they rapidly pulled up and dragged the ralbrak to the panel. It blabbered away incessantly, but neither she nor John was interested in turning on the translator to understand what it had to say. Most likely it was something about their impending, horrible deaths. Some messages came through crystal clear despite language barriers.

While they worked in tight proximity, she became increasingly worried by the labored sounds of John’s breathing and the beads of sweat that glistened on his forehead despite the continued chilly temperature. She abstained from voicing her concern. Escape was the only thing that would ameliorate John’s worsening condition. And posing useless questions about how he felt would only make him waste energy he did not have to hide the visible toll his injuries were inflicting on him.

Despite his debilitated state, in a few brisk moves John put the guard in a choke hold. To enhance the dramatic effect, he pointed a ralbrak gun to the side of its head. With those incentives, she did not have to overexert herself to pry open the ralbrak’s fist and force its splayed hand onto the pink silhouette.

The black panel emitted a rising musical scale of chirps. At each note, the color flickered through a different range of the color spectrum before it settled to a golden glow. Grinding noises sent unpleasant shivers down her back as the heavy bulwark slowly slid open. In a swift motion, she retrieved one of her weapons and stunned the ralbrak.

“Very efficient.” John let the unconscious body collapse to the floor. He retrieved the LSD from his trouser pocket. They moved to the side to remain hidden from the still opening entrance.

“Five more blips close by on the other side of that. It’s got to be the transport bay.”

Teyla nudged her head toward the corridor they had left behind. “Is anyone coming from over there?”

“Not yet, but it’s time to set up another distraction.” He pressed the C-4 detonator that he held in his hand to trigger the explosive device he had planted in his former torture chamber. Strong tremors shook the floor under their feet.

“I hope that Worf was still in there,” Teyla said.

“Yeah.” He retrieved a flash bang and with an underhand motion tossed it into the entry way. “Fire in the hole.”

They both hunkered down against the bulkhead wall, eyes downcast, and hands cupped over their ears.

She felt the reverberations through wall. Raucous screams on the other side were followed by an eerie silence, broken by a few distant moans.

“Let’s go,” John said.

They rushed into the transport bay. Through the smoke wafting about from the flash bang she saw three ralbrak writhing on the floor. Their hands were splayed over their ears and their eyes were tightly shut—no eyelids just mere slits in the facial fur. She had never seen anyone react so strongly to the flash bangs; perhaps the ralbrak’s hearing and vision were more sensitive than a human’s.

Not taking any chances with how quickly they might recover, Teyla stunned them out of their misery. Tempting as it might be to shoot them with their own ralbrak weapons, she did not have it within herself to cause further injury to the wounded no matter how little regard she had for them. However, their uninjured comrades were a fair target for the more damaging weapons. She raised the ralbrak gun to the next approaching guard, but John got to it first with his stunner.

“Let’s avoid kill shots,” he said.

Teyla usually did not question John’s orders in the field, but this time the words flew out of her mouth before she could rein them in. “I do not believe that such mercy will gain us any favors with them.”

John shook his head. “It’s not that. The more of them alive in here, the less likely that the ship’s commander will vent the bay into space to get rid of us.”

She felt bad for glaring at John for taking her shot. Why had she become so bloodthirsty? “I see your point.”

She had much to learn about combat in a space vessel, but she sincerely hoped her future would not be fraught with more opportunities to expand her education. Between their present predicament and their recent encounters with Herick and Jamus on their space station, she’d had enough of space adventures.

She and John remained in the periphery of the bay to protect their backs while they surveyed the area. The flight deck bore a remote resemblance to the one on the Daedalus, which Teyla had visited on several occasions when that ship had been docked in Atlantis. But this hollowed space appeared more disorganized or, at the very least, more cluttered by equipment, containers, tools, and assorted mysterious objects.

A few steps away from the smoke-filled bay entrance stood the polished mauve forms of what had to be two of the ralbrak transport shuttles mentioned by Kermit. The vessel design—a thick disc perched on top of four stout pillars and capped by what looked like an inverted bowl—differed strikingly from that of the boxy puddle jumpers and insect-like Darts. And, given that their girth approached the size of the entire gateroom in Atlantis, these vessels were obviously not meant to travel through the rings of the Ancestors.

The shape and color reminded Teyla of one of Charin’s most treasured possession, a tea set used only for special occasions. “It looks like a saucer.”

“Whoa … it’s a UFO,” John said.

Despite her complete confidence in John’s proven, uncanny ability to fly anything, Teyla felt reassured at his apparent familiarity with the ship design. “You have previously seen this type of space vessel?”

“Huh? No … not really. I’ll explain later.”

The temporary lull in the action was broken when blue beams struck only a few paces to her left. Teyla and John ran in a zigzag pattern to avoid being hit. They had almost reached the closest shuttle when she felt a scorching pain just below her left hip. She stumbled and would have fallen if John hadn’t caught her. He put an arm around her waist to steady her gait. They ducked behind one of the four, wide support pillars of the nearest shuttle and returned fire. One ralbrak fell and a second retreated to the other side of a short row of barrels. No matter how many times they hit it, the ralbrak guns did not damage the improvised barrier.

“You’re bleeding,” John said.

Teyla fired once more before she glanced down to check her upper thigh. The initial breathtaking pain had dulled to a more manageable burning sensation. A non-alarming quantity of blood seeped through a tear in her trousers.

“It is only a flesh wound,” she said.

John was too busy shooting to notice her discomfort and argue with her. “Cover me. I’m going to switch to the P90. It’s time to do some structural damage.”

“Yes,” she said. “We are past the stage of worrying about ricocheting bullets.”

“Way past.”

A moment later, the familiar sound of the P90 was like music to her ears. The bullets punched through the barrels. A black liquid spurted through the holes. Probably more frightened by the sound than the actual damage caused by the bullets, the ralbrak tried to dart away from its hiding spot. John’s next sweep of bullets hit it in the legs. The ralbrak fell to the ground, bellowing. Pleased with the results, Teyla put away the ralbrak gun and stunner to wield her own P90.

“Remember, avoid kill shots,” he said.

“Of course.”

“Four more incoming,” John said. “They’re trying to surround us.”

They moved along the rear circumference of the vessel. Its icy surface was seamless.

“I do not see an obvious entrance or control panel,” Teyla said.

“Me neither. Let’s check out the other one. You first.”

John began to fire the next round. She clenched her teeth and ran. Her form not quite as smooth as it would have been without a leg wound, but she covered the distance well enough. She steadied herself against the shuttle and laid the cover fire, while John ran to join her. His stride was fine, but he held his upper body stiffly. He sighed heavily when he plunked himself down next to her.

Unfortunately, like its sister, this ship also did not have an open entry. Fear of not having a viable escape option started to gnaw away at her. Dying for the cause of defeating the Wraith made sense to her, but their deaths in this alien vessel seemed utterly pointless.

“Holy crap.” John touched her shoulder. “Look, Wraith Darts.”

All that Teyla could see were the last two ralbrak transport shuttles and more piles of equipment and other goods. “Where?”

John pointed to the outermost left corner of the trapezoid-shaped flight deck. “Over there.”

On her tiptoes she could barely see beyond the stacks of containers that had blocked her view. But there they were: three deeply grooved dark grey forms that looked like the squashed down skull of a long-beaked prehistoric bird.

“I wonder how they managed to capture those,” she said.

“I dunno, but we just found our ride. Get ready, I’m going to toss another flash bang.”

And he did, to a splendid effect.

With the closest trio of pursuers incapacitated, John and Teyla reached the three Darts safely. The ugly things were parked in a row perpendicular to the bay doors. Undoubtedly, they were a better escape option than the transport shuttles. John already knew how to control the Darts. He would not need to waste precious time—time that they did not have—to learn to fly an alien ship. However, especially after her recent experience with Jamus, Teyla dreaded the idea of being dematerialized into a Dart’s storage buffer while leaving the entire burden of the rescue to John. A man who, despite his brave face, looked more and more like he should be relegated to the infirmary.

But what other choice did they have?

With her weapon poised to fire at the first sign of new pursuers, she hunkered next to the wing of the first Dart. John walked right past her.

“John, what is the matter?”

“We’ve got to take the one at the far end,” he said.

Teyla caught up with him. “But why?”

“It’s the one we were chasing when we got snatched by the ralbraks.” He ran his fingers along the flank of the cockpit. The dark grey canopy shimmered open.

She scrutinized the Dart he had selected. It looked indistinguishable from its two neighbors. “Are you certain that it is the one that culled Rodney and Ronon?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We just got lucky.”

The crooked smile on his grimy, pale face was infectious. 


	10. Chapter 10

Teyla’s question was perfectly fair. The three Darts parked nose first against the wall to the right of the bay doors appeared indistinguishable. They bore no obvious insignia or other identifiable markings like the ones painted on military air and spacecraft from Earth. But John had a pilot’s trained eye and appreciation for all flying machines. During their pursuit on the planet’s surface, he’d memorized every angle, curve, and spike on the rear of the Dart that had culled Rodney and Ronon. Because the Wraith vessels were grown organically and not made in a factory from an exact blueprint, there were subtle yet discernable differences between them.

He was one hundred percent positive that this one was it. But it was nice to get confirmation when he noticed the grooves on the Dart’s tail left by the rounds from his P90. Despite the fever chills and the unpredictable shooting pains in his back, he had a sudden burst of energy. He would fly this puppy out of here to bring his team home. All they had to do was figure out a way to get out of the ship. Piece of cake.

“John, they are coming.” Teyla nudged him to take cover between the two closest Darts. “I will circle around them to create a distraction and give you time to take the Dart and pick me up.”

Four armed ralbraks were approaching with what apparently passed for stealth in their neck of the woods. Two wore purple uniforms and two wore longer, bright pink tunics. Camouflage was obviously not a top priority for them, unless their plan was to traipse through a little girl’s dream bedroom. If he were inclined to give them some credit for knowing their own business (xenophobic and tainted by a superiority complex as it was), he might acknowledge that with their high tech MO, they probably didn’t have much need to dress for boots on the ground combat situations. But it was better for his own morale to mock them.

The Darts blocked the blasts from the ralbraks’ mega-sized banana guns without suffering any apparent damage. It would be a travesty if their only means of escape were destroyed right in front of their eyes.

John took in the dimensions of the flight deck. As he’d suspected, there was a slight hiccup in their escape plan. “There isn’t enough clearance to fly the Dart through a sweep and scoop maneuver.”

Teyla didn’t seem upset at the news. “What is the alternative?”

He liked the way she trusted him to have a plan B in hand. He postponed his answer because the ralbraks had fanned out in an attempt to outflank them. He and Teyla fired their P90s in low sweeps. The continuous rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire echoed ominously in the large chamber.

Hit at the knee, one pink ralbrak went down. Its closest companion dragged it behind a large pyramidal shaped object, which was uncomfortably reminiscent of a scaled-up version of the robotic tentacled machine that Worf had used to vivisect John. The other ralbraks stopped shooting. One of them yelled something as it waved its weapon in John and Teyla’s direction.

A second later the familiar, impersonal translator voice reverberated through the bay. “You cannot escape this ship. Surrender your weapons now and you will be allowed to live. You have our assurance that you will be set free after you provide the requested information.”

“Assurances my ass,” John said under his breath.

Teyla glanced at him. Her eyebrows were always so expressive. “What information does it want?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“It is lying,” she said. “They will kill us.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We’ll have to squeeze ourselves into the cockpit.”

“Is that even possible?”

John figured that together he and Teyla barely equaled the mass of an average Wraith pilot. “I think so, but it won’t be comfortable.”

“It certainly shall be more comfortable than remaining here,” Teyla said.

“Good point.” He dug into his tac vest and confirmed that he was out of flash bangs. For once, it would’ve been nice to have miscalculated his inventory. A smoke screen would’ve made things easier. Time for plan C. “We’ve got to….”

“The ralbraks are moving back,” Teyla said.

He looked to where she was pointing. “Crap. We’re running out of time. Cover me.”

He stepped out from behind the Dart and took careful aim at the closest retreating figure. One shot and it dropped to the ground. Another ralbrak with a blown knee cap might buy them enough time to scramble into the Dart before the ship’s captain decided to vent the bay into space. A clean way for them to get rid of the human pests their former specimens had become.

The ralbraks’ comrades stopped their retreat and returned fire. Hopefully, whoever was in charge of the ship valued its crew’s lives despite the alleged abundance of replacements in cryogenic storage.

John ducked back next to Teyla. “Shoot around them to pin them down. Try not to hit them. We don’t want them desperate, yet.”

While she was busy shooting at the ralbraks, he dug out the last block of C-4 and slipped it into one of the propulsion tubes from the middle Dart.

“I am almost out of bullets. I have to replace the magazine,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll take over.” John stepped into her post as she crouched down. He was running a little low on rounds too, but he had enough left for their immediate needs. Later they would either be free with plenty of time to replace magazines or dead.

Within a few seconds, Teyla was back in business. Unlike McKay, she had a natural facility with all the weapons they had brought over from Earth.

“Time to go,” he said. “I’ll go first. You get in right behind me.”

Without turning her attention away from the ralbraks, Teyla nodded.

John trusted her to protect his six as he stepped on the stubby Dart wing and swung his leg over to climb into the cockpit. He could ignore the stabs of pain from most of the abused parts of his body, but the spikes of fire piercing his spine made him gasp. It was as if the machine was drilling into him again. Luckily, Teyla couldn’t hear him over the racket she was making with the P90. He shoved his weaknesses aside and sat forward in the seat to leave room for her. A cursory glance reassured him that the ralbraks hadn’t messed with the Dart’s instrumentation. If they had, he and Teyla would’ve been screwed.

To cover her six, he scanned around for a target for his P90. He found nothing worth shooting at. The transport shuttles and other junk scattered around bay blocked the ralbraks’ retreating figures.

A rainbow of colored lights suddenly flashed to life on a large oblong panel to the right of the bay doors. The colors pulsed with the same cadence as the horn that had just begun to screech like a banshee. Any second now, they would start feeling the effects of decompression as the bay doors began to open into space.

“Teyla, get in here now!”

As she climbed over the side of the Dart, John remembered her leg wound. No wonder she wasn’t moving with her usual agility. He dropped the P90 in his lap and clasped her upper arm to help control her flop into the cockpit. All the twisting and jostling didn’t feel good at all. One particular bump hit him in such a bad spot that he let out a pathetic whimper.

“I am so sorry,” she said. But she didn’t stop. There was no time to be gentle.

“It’s okay,” John said.

Quickly and with only a more few hisses of pain (from both of them), she untangled her limbs and slipped into the tight space behind him. Her legs pressed against his hips and upper thighs, as if they were going for a sled ride. It was an intimate position that in a calmer situation would’ve been either very enjoyable or quite embarrassing. Teyla was his teammate, but she was also a beautiful woman, and no matter how hard John always tried to keep his thoughts about her strictly professional, he was a warm-blooded, hetero male. And she was definitely and delightfully not male. Thalen hadn’t lied when he’d told Teyla that John cared for her more than she knew.

He blinked repeatedly to clear up the many tiny points of light that flickered in his vision as he scrambled to find the internal canopy control. He pressed what was hopefully the right one. The opaque canopy materialized in an instant. For the moment, they were safe from the venting atmosphere.

He activated the Dart’s HUD. One second there was nothing there, the next a confusing mess of readouts burst into life, mysteriously projected onto the dashboard and interior curve of the canopy. All the information pilots would need, except for a direct visual of what the heck went on right outside the ship.

Behind him, Teyla gasped.

“Is it your leg? You should bandage it,” he said.

“I will, but it is not that. I have never sat in a Dart before. It feels … strange,” she said. Of course she hadn’t; all her previous experiences with Darts had involved being culled and transported as disassembled molecules in the materializer buffer.

“Can you sense it like you did when you flew the Hive ship?” John didn’t want to mention Michael and the whole Carson iratus retrovirus disaster. So many mistakes. So many regrets.

“No, I cannot,” she said. “It is a diluted version of the discomfort I feel in the presence of a single Wraith. Perhaps, I would be able to sense more if there were a tactile interface.”

“The Darts aren’t equipped with those.” So much for the wishful thinking that with her Wraith-sense she might be able to help him decipher the HUD readings.

“Sorry that I cannot be of any assistance,” she said as if she’d read his mind.

“It’s okay. I know how to fly it.”

“I am well aware that you do. I am not at all worried,” she said. He could practically hear the smile in her voice.

Last year, Lieutenant Ford and his merry band of Wraith enzyme addicts with hero complexes had forced John through a self-taught, fly-or you and your friends-die crash course on piloting a Dart. This time he didn’t have the benefit of McKay’s handy computer tablet dashboard interface to translate the readouts from the HUD. He would have to rely on his good memory and pilot instincts.

John found the section on the HUD that showed the activity in their surroundings. Apparently not much was going on. Then he noticed the energy spike readings in the center of the bay. They matched up with the life signs on his LSD.

“Two of the shuttles are being powered on. There’s a ralbrak in each.” He puzzled over the data scrolling down the right side of the Dart’s HUD. The pounding in his head and his rather primitive grasp of written Wraith weren’t helping speed things up. “The bay is almost completely vented to space.”

“Their plan is to let us go. Pursue us with their shuttles and destroy us in space.”

“Yup. They want to avoid more damage to their ship. We’d rather do the opposite.” John searched his pockets for the last detonator. He reached over his shoulder to hand it to Teyla. “I’ll need both hands to handle the controls. Would you mind being in charge of this?”

“It would be my pleasure.” She took the little gizmo from his hand. “I had not noticed you planting another charge.”

“You were busy. I hid it in the middle Dart.” He almost made a joke about the C-4 being a tip for maid service, but that would have required an explanation that he didn’t have the breath to give. “So that the debris doesn’t block our escape path, I won’t fire the Dart’s weapons until we’re out of the bay. Trigger the detonator when I tell you we’re clear of the bulkhead.” It would take him a few, precious seconds to maneuver the Dart into position to fire at any of the departing shuttles. The fewer shuttles chasing them, the better. He wasn’t sure if blowing up the Dart would do enough damage to the nearby ralbrak shuttles, but it was worth a try.

“I like your plan,” she said.

“Okay, here we go.”

And then there was no time to chit chat.

He flicked a switch and pulled up gently on the main throttle. The Dart’s engines responded immediately with a smooth vertical lift. With a touch more power, they easily broke the makeshift docking clamps that the ralbraks had used to anchor the ship onto the deck. Despite the typical moldy Wraith smell, mighty uncomfortable seats, ghoulish-looking skeletal interior, and complete reliance on instrument flying, the Darts were pretty sweet fighters.

There wasn’t much ceiling clearance in the bay, so John picked a low path that barely skimmed over the other Darts and ralbrak shuttles.

When they zoomed out of the bay into space a few seconds later, he said, “Hit it."

The C-4 must have made a bit of a mess because there was no one immediately on their tail.

To quickly reverse direction, he pulled the Dart straight up into a vertical lift. Then he swiveled into a one-eighty which positioned him for a quick descent—a textbook hammerhead turn—an acrobatic maneuver his flight instructor never imagined John would be doing in space in an alien spaceship. Good thing the Dart’s inertial dampers worked just as well as the ones in the puddle jumpers, otherwise he would have ended up squishing Teyla against the back of their cramped seat. It wouldn’t have been pleasant for either of them.

If he’d correctly interpreted the HUD, high impact destruction was ongoing in the bay compartment of the ralbrak vessel. Maybe, as he had secretly hoped, the C-4 blast had triggered the self-destruct on one or both the Darts, wreaking even more havoc.

He felt Teyla peering over his shoulder.

“Things are blowing up in there,” he said pointing to the spot on the HUD.

“Oh, I see.”

He repeatedly fired the Dart’s energy weapon at the bay entrance just as one of the shuttles was exiting. By the looks of its skittering flight pattern away from the scene, he must have hit it badly enough to partially disable it. Maybe its retrieval would keep the mother ship from chasing after them, at least for a little while. That was one piece of good news. And the other good news was that the HUD showed additional damage to the bay compartment.

He plunged the Dart along the underbelly of the larger ship and indiscriminately fired away at the structure, hoping to hit something vital. Too bad they couldn’t get a visual on what was going on. Not that it would be as impressive as the space battle scenes from _Star Wars_ and _Star Trek_ , with impossible colorful bursts of flames and rancorous blasts in airless space. The kind of stuff that inevitably drove McKay into a rant (especially when John egged him on) against the preposterous physics and other egregious scientific errors made by movie directors and, verging on criminal according to McKay, by the morons they hired as scientific advisors. The rants usually ended when John pointed out that if they hired McKay as a consultant, the movies would be scientifically accurate, special effects snoozers.

A blinking point on the HUD showed the bad news. A second shuttle had made it out of the bay unharmed. If he didn’t destroy it quickly, it might snag them with the tech they’d used to capture the three Darts in the first place. Or had the mother ship done that?

“It would’ve been helpful to know how the ralbraks managed to grab the Darts,” he said. He was flying in an erratic pattern to lure the shuttle away from the mother ship, which (if he was reading the HUD correctly) had suffered some damage beyond the bay area, but not enough to stop it from activating its own weapons system. More bad news.

“Can the Daedalus’ transport beam capture an object as large as a Dart?” Teyla said.

“No.” Some time ago, he’d read a report about the Asgard beam capabilities. The math had been very cool, the physics a little less so. Bottom line: small nukes, yes; larger more complex machines, especially while in flight, no. This didn’t mean that the ralbrak’s transporter had the same limitations. If so, why hadn’t they have used it already? “Maybe they have a tractor beam.”

“What is that?”

“Something I’ve only seen in mov…” He stopped in midstream to avoid the burst of fire from his pursuer, who had caught up with him faster than expected.

The little stinker had become a true pain in the ass. John sent the Dart downward into a spin, then rolled into an accelerated split S maneuver to reverse course and sneak up behind the too cocky ralbrak pilot. The Dart’s systems locked onto their target. It took only one pulse to tear the disc apart.

“Well done,” Teyla said. “I don’t see any other shuttles near us. Or am I misreading the display?”

“You got it right. Only those two made it out.” John manipulated the HUD to retrace their path to the point of origin. He pointed to a larger, moving blob. “Crap, the mother ship is chasing us.”

He pushed the engine to put some more distance between them and impending doom.

“Are the Dart’s weapons powerful enough to disable it?” Teyla asked.

“It’d be hard. Mama ship is a big sucker, the size of a BC-304 Daedalus-class warship. And I’ve got no intel on its shield configuration and potential weaknesses.” He checked and rechecked all the information he could glean from the HUD. Nothing useful. He supposed that in a similar situation a Wraith pilot would turn kamikaze. Contrary to popular belief, John didn’t have a death wish. Far from it. However, if alone, he might have risked another run at the ralbraks, but he refused to gamble with his teammates’ lives. “I hate to leave without finishing the job, but I think we’d best skedaddle.”

“It is for the best,” Teyla said. “I just hope that we have inflicted enough damage to prevent them from continuing on their abhorrent mission.”

“Me too,” he said. The ralbrak ship wasn’t gaining much ground. Maybe they’d damaged its engines. If that were true, they would soon lose interest in pursuing them.

“Have you located the nearest planet with a stargate?”

“Yes, we’re heading towards it. It’s a spacegate.” The HUD was set to automatically search for stargates and show a continuously updated star map of their locations. John had previous experience with this feature. It was a useful thing, because with the adrenaline rush from the dog fight simmering down, his battered body had begun to lag. He wiped at his sweaty forehead.

“Argh.” He’d forgotten about the wound in his arm. It pulsed with fire.

“Take this.” Teyla offered him a handful of pills and her canteen.

“Yes ma’am.” He took the meds and chased them down with sips of water.

“John?” Teyla sounded uncharacteristically hesitant.

“Yes?”

“Can you verify that Ronon and Rodney are indeed in this Dart?”

Excellent question. He studied the materializer readings, a handy skill that Zelenka had taught him during the McKay-Cadman simultaneously scary and weirdly entertaining, two people in one body incident. “There are only two life signs. It has to be them. It has to be.”

“You are right. The life signs must be Ronon and Rodney’s,” she said. “Thanks to the diversion they provided, we managed to help the villagers hide from the culling. No one else was taken.”

They dropped the subject without either of them mentioning that they didn’t know what happened after they were taken by the ralbraks. They had to go with the optimistic assumption that the Dart that captured their friends got caught by the ralbraks before it went back to its Hive ship to dump its latest batch of fresh meat. He squashed aside the annoying voice in his head that wanted to point out that the two life signs might be Wraith drones being transported or other poor bastards snagged during a subsequent culling. Either way, they’d get confirmation soon enough.

The ralbraks had brought them to the outer reaches of Pegasus where the Ancients had more sparsely dispersed their stargates. According to his initial estimate, at the current safely sustainable maximum speed, it should take them nearly two hours to reach the stargate. Normally, he would consider this to be a pretty short flight, but today it seemed to go on forever. He felt so drained.

“Do you want a power bar?” he said, remembering the stash he kept in his tac vest for McKay and other emergency situations.

“Yes, thank you,” she said. “You should try to eat something too.”

He took one bite of his and slowly chewed it. When he swallowed, his stomach protested. He managed to keep it down. He set the rest of the bar aside. The Dart smelled bad enough with its natural eau de Wraith mixed in with their own (probably mostly his) rather potent BO—an unrefined blend of sweat, blood, dirt, and ralbrak spittle.

To keep him and herself awake, Teyla engaged him in a conversation. First, she asked about the HUD and other Dart controls. He showed her pretty much everything he knew. With some practice she could fly this thing. Then she talked about other things. All probably interesting, but he only remembered little snippets.

At one point, the warmth of her breath against his neck made him shiver. Or maybe it was a fever chill.

“Teyla, I’m sorry about the grenade,” John said. The guilty thought had nagged him since he’d seen her sickened expression when they were traipsing through the gore.

“What do you mean?”

“I shouldn’t have made you throw it. That bloody kill shouldn’t be on your conscience.”

Not usually the touchy-feely type, Teyla gently rubbed his good shoulder. “You did not make me do anything. I did what I had to do for us to get out of that place alive. You did the same. It is the ralbraks who forced us to fight for our survival. I am glad we won.”

“Me too,” he said.

She had to nudge him a few times when he started drifting off course.

When they finally reached the spacegate, he pressed the symbols on the Dart’s DHD. “I’m dialing the spacegate in the Jalaranion solar system.” The system’s one habitable planet, M8R-174, had its own stargate. They considered M8R-174 to be currently safe from the Wraith for the tragic reason that it had been culled three months before. The surviving Jalaranions had relocated their settlements farther away from their gate, but they kept sentries posted by it.

“It would not be safe to fly the Dart through their planet’s ring,” Teyla said. Courtesy of the weapons and training provided by the Atlantis expedition, the Jalaranions were quite capable of shooting down an incoming Dart.

“That would be one stupid way to die,” he said. Even though it wasn’t funny, the irony made him chuckle (was this an early stage of delirium?). The ensuing coughing fit hurt his rib cage and brought on a dizzy spell.

Teyla made him drink more water. Maybe the discomfort from one of Worf’s intrusive devices had been worth the price of a roomy bladder.

Once they popped out of the wormhole, it took another endless hour to reach the planet. He entered the atmosphere over an uninhabited part of the single continent. He didn’t want to scare the bejesus out of its traumatized and trigger-happy population.

His headache and the shivering had gotten worse.

“John, you are quite ill. You should set down as soon as you find a suitable area,” Teyla said.

“We’re still far from the stargate,” he said, even though she was right.

“No matter, we will make Ronon and, if need be, Rodney walk to get help.”

He liked that idea. It was about time those two pitched in with this whole escape thing. So he did as he was told. The first part of the task went well. He rematerialized the two life signs in a nice grassy field near a grove of trees. No way yet to confirm that they were their two friends.

The second part was tougher. Admittedly, it was not his best landing.


	11. Chapter 11

Rodney tripped over large rock that a second before hadn’t been there. “What the frack?” Yes, Doctor Rodney McKay, double PhD, was a closet _Battlestar Galactica_ fan—the new version, of course. Primarily because hot, badass Captain Kara “Starbuck” Thrace reminded him of a certain, real-life blond female Air Force officer.

A hefty yank at the back of his tac vest stopped his face plant and prevented a probable broken nose. “Slow down, Rodney,” Ronon said.

Those were words that Rodney had never expected to hear from his brawny teammate. In fact, only moments ago Ronon had been inciting him to hurry across the narrow rivulet and run to the shelter provided by the trees on the other side. Which had apparently vanished into thin air, Rodney thought as he realized that none of those features were present in the landscape around them.

Before he could voice his annoyance, his nose started to itch and out came a very loud sneeze. How had they ended up in this allergen-infested place?

Then he heard an unmistakable whine. That was when he noticed that Ronon had turned away from him, eyes fixed on a Dart flying away from them, barely skimming a couple of meters above the tree tops that surrounded their splotch of knee-deep, blindingly verdant grass. Grass that hadn’t been there a few seconds before. To top off the strangeness, a trio of pale moons shone high above them in a cloudless sky which seconds ago had been overcast and threatening rain.

“Where the hell are we?” he said. This rather benign looking environment wasn’t what he’d expected to see after he’d realized that there was no way he could avoid a relentless and fast approaching Dart. He’d been doomed and now he wasn’t—not that he was complaining. Despite the runny nose and watery eyes, this mystery planet was much better than any Hive cell or storage cocoon.

“I don’t know,” Ronon said.

“Alright, let me rephrase that: how did we get here?”

Ronon shrugged. “The culling beam caught you and I jumped in. Next thing I know, we’re rematerialized here.”

Most of Ronon’s answer didn’t help much, except for one little detail. “Why would you let yourself get culled?”

Ronon looked at him as if he’d just asked the stupidest question in the world. “To have your back.”

“But… huh.” Rodney quickly reconsidered what he was going to say. “I mean … thanks.”

“No problem.”

They both continued to trace the flight of the Dart. It was hard to be certain from this distance, but it seemed to be getting lower and lower. Soon it would get caught by a tree top. Good riddance.

And then the Dart banked to the right.

A horrible thought struck Rodney. “Oh, my God, did they make us runners?”

At that, Ronon flashed a smile. “No, this isn’t how they do it. I was bound and wide awake when they implanted the tracker.”

“Oh, good. I didn’t mean about that—that happening to you.… I’m sorry.” Rodney shivered as he imagined how excruciating it must have been to have your back cut open without the benefit of anesthesia.

Ronon’s full attention was back to the Dart. It was curving around, as if to turn back towards them, and then it disappeared behind the tree line.

“Let’s go,” Ronon said. “It’s Sheppard.”

Of course it had to be Sheppard. Rodney felt stupid for not having thought of it himself. His brain had kind of frozen at Ronon’s personal revelation. With the runner hypothesis discounted by the indisputable resident expert, there was no other plausible reason for a Wraith to willingly set free their freshly caught meals.

“But where’s Teyla?” Rodney said.

“We’ll find out,” Ronon said. “Hurry.”

Rodney moved as fast as he could while avoiding the rocks hidden in the tall grass. He didn’t want to risk a broken or twisted ankle. As he trotted behind Ronon, he mulled over the rather worrisome mystery posed by Teyla’s absence. She’d been with Sheppard when the team split up. If the two of them were together when they took the Dart that had culled Rodney and Ronon, then Sheppard should have rematerialized her alongside them. So why hadn’t he? Unless, she had stayed to help the villagers from the planet, the planet M3… whatever. That was a better scenario than the alternative where she might have been hurt or worse.

He wished he had the time to stop, pull out his tablet to ping the nearest stargate, and identify this planet. It looked like any one of the dozens, or was it hundreds, of habitable planets they had explored during the past three years in Pegasus. Most of them were indistinguishable from each other because of the Ancient’s mass production approach and utter lack of innovative thinking in their terraforming projects.

His scramble to keep up with Ronon’s brutal pace got a little easier once they left the tiny grassy field and entered the forest. Foot-long, reddish versions of pine needles from Earth covered the flat ground. They formed a nice cushiony layer which wasn’t thick enough to hide potential obstacles such as roots and fallen branches. The massive tree trunks towered high above them, like the magnificent ancient cedars of Cathedral Grove in Vancouver Island that he and his little sister, Jeannie, had visited once on a rare family vacation in British Columbia.

Despite the midday sun, everything under the tree canopy was in the shadow. This explained why there was practically no vegetation growing underneath. Rodney did listen to Katie Brown when she went into one of her passionate mini-lectures. Botany might be a very soft science, but Katie made it sound almost sexy.

Rodney lost sight of Ronon as he shot around the largest tree they’d encountered so far. Once he circumnavigated the trunk, Rodney stopped to catch his breath. He heard a faraway, intermittent rumble. It didn’t sound like a rainstorm.

He flicked his comm on and said, “Ronon? Where did you go?”

“Are you lost?” Despite the tinny quality of the earbud, Ronon’s voice managed to convey a hefty dose of mockery.

“I am not lost. I just don’t know where you are.”

“Don’t move. I’ll come and get you.”

Sure enough, twenty seconds later, Ronon appeared a quarter turn to the left of where Rodney thought he had gone.

“This way,” he waved. “We’re almost there.”

“How do you know?” asked Rodney.

But Ronon had moved beyond hearing range. Or he was just ignoring him. Rodney stopped talking; he poured all his energy into jogging or walking really fast. He huffed and puffed as he made it over the ridge where Ronon’s dreadlocked mane disappeared from view. The scene below explained the source of the constant rumbling noise and the tangy smell in the air. And if he hadn’t been already convinced that Sheppard had to be the Dart’s pilot, the choice of landing spot would have sealed the deal.

At Rodney’s feet, the forest sharply plunged down into a barrier created by enormous stacks of bleached white tree trunks, branches, and stumps still attached to their ossified roots. Beyond that a Dart rested on the narrow strip of sand wedged between the tree bone yard and the ocean. Blue-black water rolled up onto the shore in foamy waves; the longest ones lapped up the nose of the vessel. About twenty meters from the shore lay a small archipelago of oddly shaped rock formations—some rather phallic looking, Rodney couldn’t help but observe. The locale seemed to be straight out of a Northwest Pacific travel brochure.

As he carefully made his way down the slope, Rodney caught glimpses of Ronon bobbing in and out of view while he leaped and climbed over the barrier. Rodney finally lost sight of his speedy friend when he himself started making his own carefully plotted way through what looked like the result of a pick-up-sticks game between giants. Many of the tree trunks were smooth, but others still retained the potential to gouge human flesh or at the very minimum produce mighty painful splinters. Honestly, he was trying to rush, but being careless wouldn’t do anyone any good.

By the time Rodney reached the beach, Ronon was already helping Teyla climb out of the cockpit. The relief at seeing her alive gave Rodney a spurt of energy. He ran over to help, not minding the sand that snuck into his boots and the splashes of freezing water.

Once he got her out of the Dart, Ronon picked Teyla up in his arms and carried her up the sandy bank to the nearest fallen log where he set her down with extreme caution.

“Your leg’s bleeding,” Ronon said, succinctly stating the obvious.

“It is only a superficial wound. You must tend to John. I am fine,” she said, but her pale, disheveled appearance didn’t support that statement at all.

“Rodney, help Teyla clean that up,” Ronon said as he went back to the Dart.

Rodney was too freaked out by the strange scenario to protest Ronon’s bossy tone. From this angle, only Sheppard’s dark mop of hair and his black-clad back were visible. Or they were, until the big guy blocked the view. Rodney pulled out the first aid kit from a tac-vest compartment. As he opened up the pack of dressing, his keen observation skills immediately zoomed in on one of the many oddities that characterized this situation: Teyla’s feet.

“Where are your boots? And what the hell happened to you two?”

Teyla looked down her legs, her forehead scrunched up in a frown, as if she had to think about the answer. She sighed and said, “it is a long tale, Rodney. Please go help Ronon. John is badly injured.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?” Rodney handed her the kit and walked down to the Dart. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining things or not, but to him it looked like the tide was moving in.

Ronon had stepped on the Dart’s wing and was gently shaking Sheppard’s shoulder. The man was slumped over with his face forward on the control dashboard, clearly unconscious.

“Be very careful with his left arm,” Teyla said, her voice louder than usual to be heard over the surf. “They cut his transmitter out and the wound is infected.”

“Who cut it out?” Rodney asked.

“Save the questions and give me a hand,” Ronon said.

They worked together to lift their friend as gently as possible. But despite their best effort Sheppard yelped and jerked to consciousness when Ronon put his arms around his back.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Ronon said.

“Ronon … Rod …” John said in a breathless voice. A strangled whimper cut out whatever else he was going to add.

Rodney felt the man shudder under his grip. “Just hang on. You’ll get some good meds in a minute.”

Sheppard blinked repeatedly and made a half-assed attempt at a grin. “Okay …”

Jaw clenched shut, he was panting while they lifted him. Then Rodney lost his grip and Sheppard’s lower back bumped against the side of the Dart. Sheppard cried out.

“I’m sorry,” Rodney said, but Sheppard had already fainted.

Carrying such a gangly dead weight was no easy task. Flyboy might not have an ounce of fat on his body, but his long wiry frame was packed with lean muscle. And the sand didn’t help one bit. Rodney’s boots sunk up to his ankle every step he took up the slope. More fine grains snuck in, irritating his sensitive skin. Sandy beaches were only good at a distance, preferably on postcards.

Ronon held Sheppard’s upper body and Rodney his legs. Like Teyla, he also had no boots, just very grimy and smelly socks. His wrists looked naked without the omnipresent watch and black sweatband. Even weirder: there were tiny diamond-shaped holes scattered on his BDUs. Through the fabric of Sheppard’s pants, Rodney could feel the heat emanating from his body.

“What happened to him?” he said.

“I don’t know,” Ronon said.

“He’s got a pretty high temp.”

“Yeah,” Ronon said. “The tide’s rising. There’s a safe spot up ahead.”

Teyla made a motion to slowly swing her injured leg so that she could stand up, but Ronon stopped her with a glare. “Teyla, stay. I’ll come back to help you in a minute.”

“Thank you, Ronon,” she said.

She looked too dazed and beat to argue. And it wasn’t just from the obvious physical stuff—wounded upper leg, disheveled hair, scraped and dirty face. Her usually clear eyes appeared haunted. Whatever she and Sheppard had gone through to capture the Dart and rescue them must have been a doozy.

Fortunately, getting to the spot that Ronon had identified didn’t require lugging Sheppard’s body over the tangled mess of fallen wood. With his uncanny, runner’s ability Ronon had already mapped out an easy access route. Once they got to the spot, a swatch of dry pine needles on the edge of the forest, Ronon held Sheppard up while Rodney spread out the emergency blanket. Then they laid him down on it.

“I’ll get Teyla,” Ronon said and disappeared before Rodney had a chance to get out a single thought. Ronon in rescue mode was not someone Rodney felt in anyway compelled to argue with, especially in a wilderness situation where his own genius was not called upon to resolve high-tech, imminent death situations.

Rodney was torn between the pull to get his tablet out to figure out where they were and the need to tend to his teammate. Maybe the latter could wait until Teyla and Ronon got back; they were much better at field medicine than he was and Sheppard looked kind of peaceful in his unconscious state. Best not to startle him. Logically, finding the nearest stargate was top priority because both Teyla and, especially, Sheppard needed medical attention ASAP.

But, typical Sheppard, even when he was down, he didn’t stay down for long. Rodney had just powered on the tablet when Sheppard’s eyes fluttered open and he made a motion to sit up.

“How about you stay down,” Rodney said.

“Can’t … hurts,” he said in a raspy voice.

Rodney huffed, a little exasperated, but mostly frightened. Sheppard admitting to pain was a rare and serious occurrence. The man needed proper medical attention pronto, not his own half-assed administrations. “Fine, I’ll help you sit up. But full disclosure first: is there any part of your body that doesn’t hurt?”

“I dunno.”

“How about in relative terms? A place that doesn’t hurt too much?”

“My right arm.”

“Okay, I’ll try to work within that parameter, but don’t blame me if it hurts,” Rodney said.

With only a few groans from Sheppard, Rodney had him more or less sitting up, partly supported by the nearest tree trunk. The man looked like crap—bloodshot eyes, ghostly pale except for fever-flushed cheeks, cracked lips, bruises, scrapes, and assorted smudges of dirt and other unknown substances on most of the exposed skin on his face, neck, and hands. The outer part of the right eyebrow looked singed. Even his notorious hair had lost its spunkiness. This superficial stuff had to be minor compared with whatever serious damage remained hidden by his clothing.

Rodney unzipped Sheppard’s tac vest and eased it off his shoulders. That’s when the weird factor ratcheted up a few notches.

Flyboy stunk to high heaven, worse than his socks. And what Rodney was picking up didn’t come from standard issue sweat and blood. There was another smell that was not part of Sheppard’s natural BO, a malodor that Rodney had plenty of prior exposure to during their away missions and assorted emergency, post-morning run (pre-shower) encounters back in Atlantis. What intrigued Rodney’s senses the most was that this new fetor had nothing in common with all things Wraith-related. In fact, it overpowered any scent that Sheppard might have picked up from sitting in a Dart.

“Why do you stink like a cross between an indoor swimming pool and a premed anatomy lab filled with fetal pigs?”

Sheppard frowned at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. “Huh?”

The absence of a snappy response to Rodney’s witty similes was more worrisome than his dumbfounded expression.

“Why do you smell like formaldehyde and chlorine?” Rodney enunciated each word clearly and without even a hint of his normal arrogance. Not at all in his element, he felt insecure in triaging Sheppard’s injuries. What was talking Ronon and Teyla so long? He was not cut out for this nurse Nightingale stuff.

“The ralbrak …” Sheppard said and then he started to pitch sideways.

“Who are …” Rodney grabbed him before his head got bashed on the stump. But he’d forgotten about the wounded arm. In hindsight, not an unreasonable error since the injury was covered by the omnipresent black uniform shirt.

“Argh!” Sheppard weakly batted his hand away.

“Sorry, sorry.” Rodney readjusted his grip and tried to make him as comfortable as possible. “I think you could use some NSAIDs and antibiotics. When was your last dose?”

“A … um … a while ago,” Sheppard said with the lilting, questioning inflection more common to valley girls than Air Force officers. He wiped his sweaty brow with the back of a rather unsteady hand.

Rodney noticed the crusted blood between the fingers and the scraped knuckles. A plan of action finally formed in his mind: drugs first and then he would start disinfecting those superficial injuries. A good idea, except that he’d left his first aid kit with Teyla.

He reached over for Sheppard’s tac-vest to find his supplies. That’s when he saw the smear of fresh blood on his own hand. The one he’d used to mistakenly grab the Sheppard’s wounded left arm. A hands-off but more thorough scrutiny confirmed that the dark fabric covering it was intact and glossy-wet. How much blood had he lost? Was he bleeding anywhere else? What about internal injuries? But wouldn’t Teyla have mentioned them? Although, given Sheppard as the source, it was quite possible that she didn’t even know. _Enough_ , Rodney told himself. It was time to stop pussy footing about which booboo to Band-Aid first. He wiped the hand on his pants.

“Okay, let’s get you another dose before we start the fun and games,” he said. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember Sheppard’s anal-retentive system for storing supplies in his gear, so he went through it systematically, pocket by pocket. The first things he pulled out where a couple of sleekly designed, garishly colored objects: a banana-shaped Star Trek phaser and a palm-sized heptahedron.

“What’s this tech?”

Sheppard smiled at him sheepishly. “Souvenirs for you from the ralbrak’s gift shop.”

“Funny guy,” Rodney said. “Now I know that you are definitely delirious.”

Instead of trying to get more info out of Sheppard, Rodney continued his search. He went through two empty compartments before he found the coveted packet with the meds and assorted bandages.

He handed the preset dose of pills to Sheppard. Remarkably, the man still had the strength to pop them into his mouth unassisted and swallow them dry. Given the gargantuan size of the antibiotics, this was an amazing feat even for an able-bodied person.

Rodney helped him drink a few sips of water from his canteen. “Easy now.” He pulled the canteen away. “If you don’t throw-up, I’ll give you more in a few minutes. No use wasting our limited fresh water supply.”

“Ok,” Sheppard said.

“What happened to your ammo? All that’s left from your usual stash is one measly grenade.” While Rodney talked he debated with himself whether taking care of the bleeding arm could wait for Ronon and Teyla. His hesitation had less to do with being squeamish and more to do with being fearful of hurting Sheppard.

“Used it … get away from the ralbraks.”

There was that word again. “Who the hell are the ralbraks?”

“They’re …” Sheppard attempted to clear his throat. This brought on a violent coughing fit that left him clutching his chest and wheezing like a compulsive smoker with COPD.

“Okay, zip it. No more talk from you,” Rodney said as thoughts of pneumonia flashed in his head. He used the emptied tac vest as a makeshift pillow for Sheppard’s head and propped him into a semi-sitting position that unexpectedly reminded him of Jeannie’s frayed Raggedy Ann doll—the one she persisted on calling “Dolly” despite his well-reasoned arguments that it was a dumb name for a doll. “I’m sure it’s a fascinating story, but you’ll tell it later.”

Miracles of miracles, Sheppard took Rodney’s advice and stopped talking. His eye lashes swept downward to a half mast position. Maybe, he was falling asleep, which was probably a good thing for his condition. Without any visible signs of a concussion or other type of head injury, Rodney saw no reason to keep him awake. Except there was the problem of needing to bandage his arm.

“How is John?” a familiar woman’s voice said behind him.

Startled, Rodney whipped around. “Jeez, Teyla, are you trying to give me a heart attack?” He hadn’t heard their approach over the ragged sounds made by Sheppard’s shallow, inefficient breathing.

“Hey, Rodney. Glad to see that you’re keeping a careful watch.” Ronon was carrying an armful of Teyla without breaking a sweat. He set her down on the ground with an arm around her waist to keep her steady.

“Funny, Conan, but you didn’t leave me to keep watch. You left me to take care of Sheppard,” Rodney said. “I gave him another dose of Carson’s pain-fever-antibiotic concoction.”

As soon as he said it, he felt bad for mentioning Carson. Since the day after the funeral, by an unspoken agreement the four of them had made him a taboo subject. Rodney didn’t know his teammates’ motives, but for him it was guilt of the unadulterated and unremitting grade A variety. Every thought of Carson brought up painful memories of the way his actions had led to his friend’s stupidly heroic death. He should have kept a tighter leash on his two junior scientists, Hewston and Watson, who had inadvertedly gotten themselves implanted with exploding tumors. Most of all, he should have gone fishing with Carson on the mainland. The doc was gone forever because Rodney had selfishly reneged on a commitment.

“Good,” Teyla said. She didn’t sound perturbed by Rodney’s faux pas. “It has been almost four hours since his last dose.”

“Too bad we don’t carry the heavy duty stuff.” Rodney stood up and walked over to them before continuing in a softer voice, “I think he has pneumonia. His breathing is very labored. I can hear the crackles in his chest without a stethoscope. Oh, and his arm is bleeding. I was just getting ready to bandage it.”

“Don’t … talk … like … I’m not … here,” John said, his words spread out between wheezes.

“Sheppard, I told you to save your breath for the critical body functions of inhalation and exhalation. Your brain needs every molecule of oxygen it can get,” Rodney said.

“John, please do conserve your energy. Ronon and I shall take care of your injuries.” With Ronon’s help, Teyla limped over to Sheppard’s side and eased herself down.

“Alright then,” Rodney retrieved his tablet. “I’ll get to work locating the stargate. By the way, Teyla, do you know this planet’s designation?”

“It’s the Jalaranion’s home planet,” Teyla said. She touched the back of her hand to Sheppard’s forehead. While her calm expression didn’t change, her elegantly arched eyebrows scrunched up ever so slightly.

The name sounded somewhat familiar to Rodney. “Which one is that?”

Ronon shrugged and unslung from his shoulder what had to be Teyla and Sheppard’s P90s. From an inner pocket of his leather jacket, he dug out two Wraith stunners. He set the arsenal by Sheppard’s feet.

“M8R-174,” Teyla said. She took hold of the knife that Ronon handed her. Rodney hadn’t heard her ask for it. Sometimes, those two behaved as if they had ESP.

“Oh, the one with the Atlantis-weaponized trigger-happy people,” Rodney said. “I’m pleasantly amazed that you didn’t get shot down when you exited the stargate.”

“John used the nearby spacegate so as not to take any chances,” Teyla said as she deftly ripped open the sleeve of Sheppard’s shirt. “He cut short his attempt to safely fly us closer to their settlement because he got too dizzy to continue piloting the Dart.”

At the sight of the red and yellow-stained bandage, Rodney wrinkled his nose and took a few steps back. Ronon grabbed the first-aid kit from Rodney’s hand and kneeled next to Teyla.

Glad that Sheppard was in expert hands and that he didn’t have to help with the wound cleaning, Rodney got busy with the tablet. It didn’t take him long to determine that they were approximately six kilometers southeast of the stargate. A distance that Sheppard and Teyla couldn’t possibly walk because of their injuries. It was also too far for them to be carried in any reasonable length of time.

Rodney glanced up at the huddled trio. Ronon and Teyla’s grim expressions confirmed his suspicion that Sheppard didn’t have much time.

He swallowed hard. What good was his genius brain when the only things he had to work with were a high-tech tablet, a cache of killer weapons, and a Dart that could only be flown by a sick man who desperately needed a medevac?

Panic rose in his belly at the thought of losing another friend.


	12. Chapter 12

At his first glance of Sheppard’s wounded arm, Ronon wasn’t sure which sign was worse: the dark blood tinged with pus that oozed through the ripped, loosened bandage or the red swollen surrounding flesh.

“John, we have to replace the dressing and cleanse the wound. It’s bleeding again,” Teyla said.

“Great.” Sheppard managed to infuse sarcasm in his wheezy response.

“Teyla, will you …” Ronon started to say, but he stopped. Her fingers were trembling as she reached over to release the bandage’s closure clip.

Hand still hovering over the bandage, Teyla turned to face him. “Yes?”

His normally most serene teammate looked frazzled over and above sheer physical exhaustion. Beyond the puffiness from lack of sleep and unshed tears, her gaze held the edginess of a battle-worn soldier at the brink of endurance. This wasn’t the time to ask her if she could handle the first-aid on her own so that he could head to the stargate to dial-up Atlantis.

“Let me do that. Here’s the kit.” Ronon handed her the first aid pouch.

“Thank you.” She took it and gave him a weary smile before returning her attention to Sheppard.

Ronon wasn’t fooled by her attempt to reassure him that she was okay. “Teyla, are you hurt anywhere else?”

“My leg is sore, otherwise I am fine,” Teyla said.

With a sluggish move, Sheppard turned to look at her. “Sorry the landing was so rough.”

“No need to apologize, John. This forest is very thick and despite how poorly you feel, you brought the Dart down safely in a very narrow area.” Teyla retrieved the antiseptic spray and a fresh bandage from the bag. “It is a majestic beach.”

Sat on a tree stump a few steps away, Rodney didn’t even glance up. “Only Sheppard could find a replica of Olympic National Park in Pegasus. It made me flashback to my parents dragging me out of science camp to go on tree-hugging vacations with them and Jeannie.”

Only a handful of those words made sense. Since Sheppard, his usual Rodney translator, wasn’t exactly functional, Ronon looked at Teyla for an explanation. She shrugged. This time her grin was genuine. At least on the surface—she had regained some of her natural steadfastness.

“Good waves,” Ronon said.

“Really?” Sheppard perked up a little at that.

A wall of giant white logs blocked their view, but the rumble of the ocean was unmistakable.

“Yeah, I bet it’s good for surfing,” Ronon said. Not that long ago, Sheppard had described the sport of riding waves on small oblong platforms. It sounded like it’d be a lot more fun than golf.

Ronon tried his best to handle Sheppard’s arm gently while he unwrapped the saturated cloth. The coppery smell of blood wasn’t strong enough to dampen the acrid stink that emanated from both of his bootless teammates. The direction of the wafting smells pointed to their feet as the primary culprit. Shiny gold and orange fibers were stuck to the numerous dark amber glops that clung to the black socks. Gory remnants of his friends’ struggles to escape from the alien ship, Ronon suspected.

“Were the ralbraks furry?” he said.

“Yes,” Teyla said. “Strangely beautiful and harmless looking in appearance, cruel and pompous in reality.”

“Teyla, who the hell are the ralbraks?” Rodney said. “Sheppard tried to explain but he ran out of breath.”

“Our captors call themselves The People. They believe that their god wants them to torture and kill other beings in the interest of scientific discovery. They are worse than the Wraith. I called them ralbraks after a ...”

“Wait a second,” Rodney suddenly stood up. “How come Teyla gets to name aliens?”

“It’s a good name,” Ronon said.

“But, it’s a first contact and … and I never get to name anything!” Rodney said.

“Rod … gateships?” Sheppard spurted out before another violent barrage of coughs made him double over.

Ronon dropped the edge of the bandage to brace Sheppard from falling face-first to the ground.

“Dammit, Sheppard. Don’t talk!” Rodney said.

“Rodney, please. If you do not wish John to talk, do not draw him into a conversation,” Teyla said. “We will give you a full debrief on the ralbraks later.”

“Okay, okay. Here, take this.” Rodney handed her a clean handkerchief and his canteen. Then he returned to his seat and resumed tapping away at the tablet.

After she dribbled water from the canteen onto the cloth, Teyla used it to wipe Sheppard’s feverish forehead. In the middle of his next coughing fit, he snatched the handkerchief from her hand and hacked into it. The way his rib cage shook, Ronon half-expected chunks of his lungs to come flying out.

Unfortunately reality was not that far off. Blood-streaked greenish phlegm stained the white cloth crumpled in Sheppard’s palm.

“Broken ribs?” Ronon kept his voice low. He didn’t want to send Rodney into a panic attack.

Still unable to speak, Sheppard shook his head in denial.

“I think that Rodney might be right about this being pneumonia,” Teyla said.

Ronon wasn’t so sure. Just because Sheppard didn’t think he had a broken rib didn’t make it true. But he wasn’t going to start a useless discussion with Rodney and Teyla. No time to waste, he had to get his friends back to Atlantis. Yesterday.

Within half a minute, Sheppard resumed breathing more or less normally. Ronon helped him drink a few sips of water. Then, he peeled back the last layer of non-stick bandage.

At the ugly sight, Ronon sucked in a breath. The round crater was big enough to swallow a golf ball. It was bleeding and would’ve been gushing if it hadn’t been partly cauterized. Pure butchery.

“Are you ready, John?” Teyla said.

“Yeah,” Sheppard said.

Teyla poured the cleaning solution into the wound. Watery blood streaked down Sheppard’s arm and dripped onto the pine needle-covered ground.

Sheppard stifled a few choice words between gritted teeth. The muscles of his upper body became tight as a drum as he stopped himself from jerking his arm away. Then, he sagged his forehead into Ronon’s shoulder.

Teyla wasted no time. She sprinkled the wound with clotting powder before she wrapped it in a fresh bandage.  

Once done she said, “We should check your back, John.”

“No, it’s fine,” Sheppard said, his shredded voice a notch above a whisper.

Teyla gave Sheppard her sternest no nonsense look.

He missed it. His eyes were at half-mast and he’d turned another full shade paler than before.

“Let me make sure that you are not bleeding. Then you may rest,” Teyla said.

Instead of waiting for an answer, she took advantage of the rips on Sheppard’s shirt to take a peek at his back. Ronon didn’t have the best angle, but he saw that most of his spine was covered by taped bandages smudged with dried blood.

“What did they do to him?” he asked.

“They took tissue samples from his organs and did other gruesome things. It is not my story to tell, Ronon.”

Sheppard glared at them. He tried to speak, but his voice turned into a croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Mc—Kay, how many days?”

Rodney jerked his head up. “What?”

With one hand pressed to his chest as he sucked in a succession of short gasping breaths, Sheppard couldn’t answer.

“Come on, McKay,” Ronon said. “How many days have we been gone? Or haven’t you figured it out yet?”

Judging by the thickness of Sheppard’s dark stubble, he estimated three days. His own and Rodney’s faces were still relatively smooth. The two of them had been safely oblivious in the dematerialization buffer while Sheppard and Teyla had gone through hell to save them all.

“Of course, I have figured it out. It’s been sixty-nine hours and thirty-five minutes since we missed our last scheduled check-in.” Rodney’s smug tone mellowed into a plea. “Teyla, for the love of God, can’t you give him something to make him stop wheezing?”

“I wish I could, but there is nothing in the first aid kit that will help,” Teyla said. “If you would gather up lightwood, we could start a fire to brew a restorative tea.”

“Seriously? You want me to pick up sticks?” Rodney said.

“Yes, Rodney, that would be wonderful.” Teyla made it sound as if he had responded with enthusiasm to her request. “There are plenty around. It will not take you long.”

“Unless you’d rather do this.” With his bloodied hand, Ronon pointed at Sheppard’s arm.

“Nah, it’s alright. I’ll get the kindling.” Rodney tucked the tablet inside the backpack he’d placed on the ground and walked towards the trees away from the beach.

Despite his grumblings and endless complaints, he’d learned a lot about mastering the tricks of camping out in the rough. No need to remind him to only collect dry sticks.

As Ronon helped Sheppard find a somewhat comfortable position to lie down, he noticed the dozens of oddly shaped welts and angry burns on his arms, and the deep abrasions where his watch and wristband used to be. He’d been restrained and tortured. Something that Teyla hadn’t mentioned while Ronon had carried her from the beach. All she’d said was that she and Sheppard had found each other in the bowels of an alien ship. They’d fought their way to the shuttle bay and escaped on the Dart that Sheppard had recognized to be the one that had captured Rodney and him.

She had left much unsaid.  

With a sick feeling in his heart, Ronon took a closer look at Teyla. There were bruises, scrapes, and cuts all over her face and hands. Signs that she had fought hard—but no abrasions on her wrists. And nothing else like the telltale torture marks on Sheppard. That was a relief.

Weirdly, both of them sported dozens of tiny, identically-shaped holes scattered all over their clothes. As a tactic, it made sense to take a prisoner’s boots to make escape more difficult, even if in a spaceship it wouldn’t be much of a deterrent. But why cut holes in their uniforms?

His thoughts turned on to more practical matters.

“Are you hungry?” He searched his pockets and pulled out his food rations: packets of Athosian meat jerky and Earth food bars.

“Yes, thank you.” Teyla selected the jerky.

Apparently asleep, Sheppard shivered. Ronon took off his leather coat and draped it over him. In between hearty bites, Teyla zipped up her jacket.

Ronon found the ocean breeze refreshing. They had geared-up for a mission on a much colder planet. “Do you have a fever too?”

“No, I still feel the chill from the ralbrak ship. The temperature was so frigid that we could see our breath. The fire will help warm me,” she said.

Just then, Rodney came back with an impressive armful of firewood which he dropped on the ground. Ronon sent him a withering glare, but Sheppard didn’t even stir from the loud clatter. Without being prompted, Rodney began to build the cone of sticks and twigs for the campfire.

Ronon crouched down by his side. “How far is the stargate?”

“It’s six klicks bearing East-South-East,” Rodney said. “That’s if you can go straight, which is unlikely because there’re three … no make it four streams and a river to cross.”

Ronon jumped on top of the nearest fallen log to look back at the beach. The tide was rising. Lapping waves were beginning to toy with the Dart, making it turn this way and that. Depending on how soon the tide peaked, the power of the ocean might become forceful enough to snatch the small ship off the beach.

As he judged the distance between the horizon and the sun, Ronon barely noticed the swirls of purples and oranges that painted the distant sky. There wasn’t much time left before it set. If they were lucky, the triplet moons would provide enough light to travel.

He stepped down. “Teyla, McKay will start the fire and help you brew the tea. I’ll make a run for the gate.”

“Wait, Ronon,” she said. “You should not go alone. Rodney must accompany you.”

Ronon eyed his least fit teammate, who was busy blowing on the smoldering embers. With him along it would take twice as long to reach the stargate. “Why?”

“The Jalaranions will recognize Rodney. They are not acquainted with you and they react very poorly to strangers,” Teyla said.

Rodney snorted loudly. “That’s an understatement. But yeah, they shoot first and ask questions later.”

“They won’t see me until I want them to. Then I’ll tell them I’m with you,” Ronon said.

“It won’t work,” Rodney said. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? I wasn’t kidding. They will shoot you on sight with the guns we gave them. You won’t have a chance to tell them anything.”

“Rodney speaks the truth. This time, he is not exaggerating,” Teyla said.

“What? I do not exaggerate,” Rodney said. “I …”

Ronon cut him off. “Fine. We’ll go together, but we have to move fast.”

Rodney gave a sidelong glance at Sheppard. “Believe me, I know.”

As anxious as he was to go, Ronon was equally anxious to make sure that Teyla and Sheppard had everything he could provide to make them as safe and comfortable as possible.

“I’ll refill the canteens. There’s a stream nearby,” he said. Everyone’s kit included filters and pills to purify water, even ocean water if that was the only option.

“Ronon, along the way please look for bhasam buds or lughworth bark to fortify the tea,” Teyla said.

“Okay.”

Ronon made quick work of collecting the water and a handful of bark. No buds nearby. It was probably too late in the season.

When he returned to the campsite, Teyla had started to brew the tea in the clever collapsible kettle she always carried with her. Under her watch, he crumpled some of the bark into the steaming water.

Rodney had taken off his boots and socks, and was busy shaking them free of sand. “I have ultra-sensitive skin. I’ll run much faster without abrasive particles stuck between my toes.”

“Good,” Ronon said. He wasn’t in the mood to mock him now. Probably later.

“Ronon,” Sheppard said. “Help me up.”

He wasn’t asleep after all.

Ronon dropped down on one knee next to him. “Sheppard, you should rest. Everything is under control.”

“Huh. I need to take a leak.”

No arguing with that. As gingerly as possible, Ronon hauled him upright, slung his good arm over the shoulder, and walked Sheppard the minimum distance to give him some privacy. His steps were remarkably steady considering his strained breathing.

They stopped behind a tree. Ronon gave him some space to do his business, but he didn’t stray too far in case he keeled over.

On the way back to the campsite, Ronon said, “What did the ralbraks want from you?”

“My origins.”

“Atlantis?”

“Earth.”

Above the sound of Sheppard’s shuffling steps, Ronon heard Teyla and Rodney talk.

“Let me get this straight,” Rodney said. “These alien Mengele wannabes travel between galaxies to collect, vivisect, and study other sentient species in the name of religion?”

“In essence, yes. John’s captor told him that I had been rejected as a subject of their experimentation because they had already studied enough of my people. That means that some Athosians whom we had thought lost to the Wraith had an even worse death at the hands of monsters we had no idea even existed.”

Ronon had never heard so much contempt in her voice.

“I … I am so sorry, Teyla.” Rodney said. Sometimes he did show unexpected levels of tact.

“Thank you, Rodney,” Teyla said. “Who is this Mengele person you mentioned?”

“Ah, um, Josef Mengele was a Nazi military doctor—mind you, a medical doctor, not a real scientist like me—from a dark time in Earth’s history. He led a …”

“The Nazis like in that Jones movie?” Teyla asked. “Was that based on a true story?”

“ _Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom_ wasn’t a true story. As I was saying, Mengele led a ….”

“Rodney, not now,” Sheppard said in a firm tone.

“Right,” Rodney said. “I’ll explain later.”

As they stepped closer to the crackling fire, Ronon said, “Did you destroy their ship?”

“No. Too big,” Sheppard said.

“It was not for a lack of trying,” Teyla said. “During our escape, we detonated John’s supply of C4 in different sections of the ship, including at least one of their shuttles which might have had a cascade effect on the others. Once we flew out of the flight deck, John caused more damage with the Dart’s weapons. At the very least, we disabled the ship sufficiently to stop it from continuing to pursue us. Its shuttles are too large to travel through stargates.”

“Rod—” Sheppard’s words got lost as he hawked up another chunk of his lungs onto his sleeve.

“Take it easy. Here, have a sip.” Ronon offered him his canteen.

Sheppard waved it away and slowly stood up. “Rodney, can you retrieve the Dart’s sensor data?”

“Yes, but,” Rodney looked puzzled for a second. Then, he snapped his fingers. “Of course, by analyzing the Dart’s logs, we’ll be able to extract the data on the ralbrak ship’s energy signature and use it to program Atlantis’ long-range sensors to detect it. When we dial-up Atlantis, I’ll get Zelenka to bring some minions to retrieve the data array. They could even disassemble the Dart so that we can bring it back to Atlantis to study it.”

“Hate to break it to you. The tide has reached the Dart,” Ronon said.

“That’s not good,” Rodney said.

Sheppard shook off Ronon’s support. “You’ve got to secure the Dart or yank out the data array.”

“But Rodney and Ronon must leave immediately for the stargate to call Atlantis for assistance. You need medical care,” Teyla said.

“I can wait,” Sheppard said.

“John, your arm is badly infected and …” she said.

“That ship is still out there. We have to warn Stargate command.” Sheppard said.

“We’ll deal with the Dart and go.” Ronon nipped their argument in the bud. He nudged his chin Rodney’s way, hoping that he would catch on.

And he did.

“It’ll only take a couple of minutes,” Rodney said. “Don’t forget: genius here.”

The waves had mellowed a little and it didn’t take long at all. Even if Ronon had to do most of the work because Rodney didn’t want to get his boots wet.

A quarter of an hour later, Ronon surveyed the barebones camp site. Between him and Rodney, they had collected enough firewood and water. Although limping, Teyla had refused any help and disappeared into the bushes on her own for a short break. She had returned and was sniffing the brew to judge its readiness.

Ronon wished he could hang around long enough to watch Sheppard drink down that nasty stuff.

“Do you need anything else before we go?” he said.

“No. We will be fine. We have food and water, and are well armed.” Teyla patted the P90 and stunner at her side. “This part of Jalara is not known to be inhabited by large predators.”

“I checked the life sign detector. Nothing bigger than a squirrel within its range,” Rodney said.

It was time to leave. Sheppard had closed his eyes. Doubtful that he’d fallen asleep that fast. He was probably just concentrating on breathing and ignoring the pain wracking his battered body. Teyla looked exhausted but determined to keep watch. Too bad he couldn’t give her a couple of hours to sleep before they left. But by then they would lose the light from the moons.

\-------------------------------

From the start, Ronon kept them moving at such a brutal pace that the only sounds coming from Rodney were panting and the racket he made jogging through the forest. Lucky for them, stealth wasn’t an issue. Speed was. At least until they got close to the Jalaranion’s territory.

Knowing him, the scientist’s head might explode soon if he didn’t get a chance to talk. To be honest, Ronon’s own brain was churning through so many bits of information about what had happened that he wouldn’t mind hearing Rodney’s take. His combination of intelligence and unfiltered bluntness tended to be on-target—even entertaining, at times.

Instead, both of them dodged through trees and sloshed through the first two streams without speaking a single word. Ronon had forced aside his worry for his injured teammates and guilt about having Rodney get caught by the Dart’s culling beam. Personal recrimination would have to wait for later. All he could do now was focus on plotting the fastest course to the stargate. He had memorized the map that Rodney had shown him on the tablet.

The terrain became more hazardous when they entered a grove of broad-leaved trees that had gnarled, shallow roots and branches low enough to whack them in the head. They slowed down to a fast walk.

That precaution didn’t prevent Rodney from tripping and falling on his hands and knees.

Ronon stopped and took a few steps back to lend him a hand. “You okay?”

After wiping his muddied palms on his trousers, Rodney brushed off the wet leaves that stuck to his knees. “Nothing broken, I think.”

“Let’s take a water break,” Ronon said.

Rodney gulped down a long slug from his canteen. “Let me get the tablet out to check on our position.”

“Don’t bother. I know where we are.”

“You do?”

“Yes, McKay, I am a tracker, remember? I don’t get lost.”

“Of course you don’t. So how much further do we have to go?”

“We’re not even half way there. Come on.”

“Do you think Sheppard will be okay?’

“Sheppard’s tough. He’s been through worse.”

“I know,” Rodney said, but he didn’t sound at all convinced.

Ronon wasn’t either. What could be worse: Being turned into an Iratus bug, fed on by a Wraith in front of an audience, or cut open and tortured by a ralbrak? Too much for one person to take in a lifetime, let alone all within the last year and a half.

While they walked at a brisk pace, Rodney kept on talking. “Teyla said little—mind you, very little—about what happened to them. She is usually much more talkative. She seemed atypically shook-up.”

Ronon imagined that the things that would unhinge Teyla were the same ones that would tear at him too. Among the top of the list: witnessing a close comrade being tortured while you are powerless to prevent it.

“She’s beat and worried about Sheppard,” he said. “Less talking, more walking.”

The river crossing took more effort. Ronon scouted for the narrowest spot in the vicinity. Wielding a thick, long stick to test the water depth, he waded in.

“Step exactly where I place my feet,” he said.

“I know the drill.” Rodney held his pack high above his head even though the water barely reached his ankles. “Argh. It’s cold.”

They trudged on. The water rose past their hips. Luckily the current wasn’t strong enough to sweep them off their feet. And, miracles of miracles, they made it to the other side without either of them slipping in.

Once they clambered up to the top of the steep river bank, Ronon checked the position of the moons and two guiding stars to make sure that they were still heading in the right direction. Rodney plopped himself down on a dry patch of grass and pulled off his boots. He tipped them over and shook them viciously before dumping them on the ground.

“What are you doing?” Ronon said.

“What does it look like I am doing?” Rodney pulled off his soggy sock. “I have a dry pair in my pack.”

“We have to hurry.”

“I am. Otherwise I would take the time to change my underwear. The chafing is going to …”

“McKay.”

“I am almost done,” he said. “What’s your secret? How do you manage with the boots you got soaked at the beach and those leather pants?”

Ronon started walking away. Sometimes he thought of McKay as a brother, the same as Sheppard. And other times, he acted like the annoying cousin or uncle that nobody wanted to be around.

He went around the remains of a massive tree. Apparently struck by lightning its crown had split and crashed to the ground taking with it a half dozen neighboring trees. The area around it was a maze of tangled, broken still leafy branches. The rooted blackened stump towered over the site.

Before entering the next patch of healthy forest, Ronon stopped and turned to make sure that Rodney was following him.

When Rodney caught up with him, he changed the subject. “Did you notice all the diamond shaped holes all over their clothes?”

“Yeah. Weird.”

“I think that the so-called ralbraks took the fabric samples for analysis, maybe something like nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy or mass spectrometry.” Rodney said.

Ronon wanted so much to wipe that know-it-all look from his face that he didn’t consider that Teyla and Sheppard might not appreciate him letting slip this next tidbit. “They weren’t wearing their clothes when the holes got punched.”

“Really? How can you be so sure?”

“No matching marks on their skin. You didn’t notice?”

“Ah. Well no. I was too busy making sure that Sheppard didn’t bleed to death to …”

And that’s when it happened, a shift in the breeze and then a loud crack high above them.

“Run!” Ronon grabbed Rodney’s arm and pulled him along.

They only managed a few steps when a falling branch wacked Ronon on the shoulder. He staggered but kept on moving long enough to push Rodney to the ground and shield him with his body.

An enormous force slammed onto Ronon’s back, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Stars swum in his vision. Twin grenades of pain exploded in his leg and head. Everything went dark.


	13. Chapter 13

After she waved goodbye to Ronon and Rodney, Teyla turned her attention to the brewing tea. She wafted her hand over the kettle and sniffed the vapors. It smelled ready. Unfortunately for John, she did not have any herbs to mask its bitter taste.

She eyed him. He appeared to have fallen asleep. His raspy breathing had slowed down and the tense lines around his eyes had relaxed a little. She didn’t want to wake him up. The tea would wait. Either another coughing fit or a nightmare would wake him up soon enough. They both had been exposed to plenty of new material to fuel bad dreams for a long time to come.

Using the curved branch that Ronon had set up for her, she moved the kettle off the fire to let it cool to a drinkable temperature. Then, with her back supported by the tree stump, she lowered herself on a corner of the blanket next to John.

Different parts of her body protested each movement she made. The worst was the ralbrak gun wound. While it no longer bled, it burned as if she had been scalded by boiling water. To compound her discomfort, she smelled beyond vile. Stiff with layers of sweat and grime, her clothes were redolent with the odors from the ralbrak ship. Now that the fire had warmed her up, she could barely stand the fabric’s weight on her skin.

She stretched out her legs and caught sight of her disgusting socks. The evidence of what she had trampled on taunted her. Those vile creatures deserved what they got, but she did not need this reminder of their messy end.

In a fit of ire, she rolled the offending items off her feet and threw them in the fire. She would rather have frozen feet than wear those things for one more minute.

The damp socks smothered the fire. Regretting her temper tantrum, she scrambled up to poke at the dwindling flames with a long stick. The fire got smoky and popped a few times. She added several dry sticks and a log. Red-orange ribbons ghosted up, consuming the smallest twigs before they licked up the flanks of the larger piece of wood.

Behind her, John’s breathing had grown more ragged. As she turned, he flailed his arm. Ronon’s jacket slipped off his shoulders. She limped over and tugged the jacket back in place.

Without conscious thought, she started humming a soothing tune. A long-lost memory surfaced from her past: a campfire much like this one, snuggling in a warm blanket as her tongue played with her first loose tooth. A woman sung a lullaby. A man joined in. Safe between her mother and father, Teyla pretended to have fallen asleep while she listened to her parents’ voices drift from one melody to the next. Even though her eyes were shut, she sensed her parents exchanging loving smiles at each other.

For a moment, the image was so vivid. She glanced across the fire as if expecting them to be there. A silly thought—she and John were alone.

Physically and mentally drained, she sat back down. She leaned her head against the tree stump. Her eyes wanted to close but she would not let them. She looked up at the smidgen of darkening sky that peaked through the dense canopy. A bright dot of light twinkled against the purple-blue background. It seemed too low to be one the first stars of the early night sky. Maybe it was one of the planets she and John had passed on their way from the spacegate. All they had seen of it was a blip on the Dart’s monitoring screen. John had complained about how the opaque canopy took the joy out of flying. That had sent them off into a discussion about whether there was anything that the Wraith enjoyed doing besides sucking the life out of humans. She had relaxed and enjoyed the moment. The forced intimacy of their bodies crammed in such a tight space had felt much less awkward that it should have. Almost natural. And John had fooled her, and maybe himself too, into sounding much healthier than he was.

A big yawn escaped her mouth. Teyla rubbed her face to fend off the lull of sleep. Regardless of how bone-deep tired she felt, she had no intention of closing her eyes even for a single instant. She was not that worried about failing to keep watch. No dangerous beasts lurked in the nearby woods, waiting to attack when she lowered her guard. She had to stay awake to take care of John.

Earlier, neither she nor Ronon had voiced their alarm out loud to avoid sending Rodney into a panic, since John—the only one of them who had mastered the skill—was in no condition to make the scientist snap out of it and harness his manic energy to a useful purpose, usually a miraculous solution to an imminent life-and-death disaster. There were no miracles to be had this time. John’s salvation rested solely on Ronon and Rodney’s speed at bringing back help from Atlantis. She imagined that Ronon had modulated his pace so that Rodney could keep up with him and Rodney was running as fast as possible without complaining—or, at the very least, reducing the whining a notch. The image was quite amusing.

With her absolute faith in her teammates’ abilities, she expected that, well before the leading moon reached its zenith, the communicator Ronon had left (since she and John had lost theirs in the ralbrak ship) would crackle with one of their voices announcing success.

In the meantime, she would tend to John. He would not slip away. She had lost too many family and dear friends already. The pain from some of those deaths had dulled down over time, but the two most recent ones—Carson Beckett and Harriet Hewston—were far too fresh. Even though she should have grown accustomed to bearing such loses by now, each hacked away another piece of her heart. How many more until nothing but memories would be left to hold it together? That was the burden of the living. She sympathized with how some people preferred to isolate themselves from friendship and love to escape the agony of loss. But, as Charin had taught her, that was not a life worth living. Despite the pain, it was better to get close to people and enjoy their presence for however long it might last than to never try to know them at all.

Her eyes drifted back to John’s sleeping form. Through a strange set of circumstances triggered by the acceptance of a cup of tea, this man from another galaxy had become her friend—one of her closest. Together in the past three years, they had gone through much: battling the Wraith and the Genii, losing friends and comrades, making enemies, and forging alliances across Pegasus. Today, they had almost perished in a senseless death at the hands of a new, completely unexpected enemy. What else might happen tomorrow or the next month? How many more close calls could they survive? Would it be better to be the first to die or to be the one left behind?

Her mind circled back to an old argument that she had been having with herself. Maybe the patient wait-and-see approach was not a good gamble when living in a perpetual state of war. What was the point of fighting on if you do not let yourself live? She did not fear death. What she feared were the missed chances that came with an early death.

She broke a stick and threw it into the fire. With another she swatted away the flying insects that had been attracted to the light. She stared at the flames as though they might give her the wisdom to properly sort through the swirl of confused emotions buzzing in her head. Maybe, Harriet had been right. The man she had grown to care for more deeply than a friend came from another culture and was patently oblivious to the signs that others cared for him. As Harriet said, he might very well never make the first move. Knowing him as well as Teyla did, what made her so sure that he would drift one iota off his clueless course? She, on the other hand, had already done so many things that went against the way of her people, why not go one more step and start the conversation? What did she have to lose?

Nothing or everything.

“Te—Teyla?” John’s hoarse whisper abruptly brought her back to reality.

“I am here, John.”

His eyes were closed. Beads of sweat glazed his forehead. Afraid she would startle him, she fought the impulse to comfort him with a touch.

Suddenly, his eyes fluttered open—not enough light to discern their true color. His faraway gaze remained unfocused as if he were looking through her. “Worf said you’re dead.”

“I am not dead,” she said.

“I lost you.”

“We got out, John. We are safe. Ronon and Rodney went to fetch help.”

“They spaced you like garbage.”

“No. No, they tried to and failed. We escaped.” Teyla poured water on a remnant of John’s shirt sleeve and used it to push aside the limp, dark hair matted on his forehead. While still abnormally warm, he felt a little cooler than before. Maybe the anti-fever medication was starting to have an effect.

“If it’s … last thing … I’ll kill them.” John’s lips were cracked. His eyes darted from side to side under now closed lids.

“You did, John,” she said. “We killed many of them during our escape.”

“Not real … you’re dead,” he rambled on. His head shook from side to side.

“Please wake-up, John.” She patted his hand. “You are having a nightmare.”

“I’ll kill them …” he said more forcefully, lost in his delirium.

“Hold on, John. You will be in the Atlantis infirmary very soon. Although young, Dr. Jennifer Keller is very competent. She will take good care of you.”

She continued to whisper to him reassurances until he quieted down. As she monitored his wheezy breaths, she grew more anxious. His chest was rising and falling too quickly, not enough air to fill his lungs. If only they had access to the emergency equipment from a jumper. The intense worry burned off her own exhaustion. When would help arrive?

She had no timekeeping device and John’s watch had been lost in the ralbrak ship. But her excellent internal clock made her certain that by now Ronon and Rodney had to have reached the Jalaranion’s territory. Ronon would surely have a good story to tell about Rodney’s awkward initial contact. He probably had blurted out something that could have been perceived as an insult and then would have had to backtrack. That must be the reason for their delay.

A few minutes later, John grew restless again. In a halting voice that she could barely hear, he said, “What … do … you want?”

“It is alright, John. No one wants anything from you,” she said.

“Why’re you … doing this?” Anger and fear mingled in his voice.

“No one is doing anything to you,” Teyla said, feeling like an intruder eavesdropping as he relived his torture. “We are not in danger anymore. We escaped the ralbraks and are now safe.”

It startled her when he suddenly sat up and cried out in pain. His eyes sprung open as he held his arm tightly against his body and muttered a string of curses which were strangely comforting to Teyla. John was awake and not too sick to be himself when not in the clutches of unspeakable memories.

She stayed silent to give him a veil of privacy while he composed himself.

His puzzled expression—which would have been comical under different circumstances—dissipated as he made sense of his surroundings.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It was a very bad dream brought on by your fever.”

“A doozy.”

“Yes.” She offered him the cup of tea. “Drink this.”

John frowned. “Does it taste as bad as it smells?”

“Worse. But the tea should help you breathe more easily.” Or so she hoped.

She held the cup to his lips as he downed several gulps. The way his features scrunched up in disgust made her smile.

“Tastes like mothballs,” he said.

Just when she thought she understood the variety of Earth’s foods, a new one came up. “Why would your people cook moths? I do like the meatballs that the cooks sometimes serve in the mess hall, but I do not believe that moths can be turned into something edible.”

His burst of laughter turned into a harsh cough. He hastily covered his mouth with the sleeve of his good arm. She held him as his whole body shook. When the coughing finally subsided, he pulled back from her. The black color of his shirt did not mask the fresh red and green droplets on his sleeve. Since there was nothing useful she could say, she did not comment. She offered him another drink. He took a slow sip. Then he leaned against the tree stump.

Teyla placed the cup on the ground. His breathing appeared to have eased up a little, but he was shivering. Maybe it was because of the fever, but she too felt chilled. A shift in the breeze was bringing cooler air from the ocean. She draped Ronon’s jacket back over his shoulders.

“You take it,” he said in a gruff voice.

“I am not the one with a high temperature.” She raised her eyebrows daring him to argue with her. He did not take the bait. Not a good sign. As if she needed other indicators that he urgently required proper medical care.

He clinched the jacket tighter against his body. “Any word?”

“Not yet. Soon I am sure,” she said. Truth be told, she was starting to get concerned. Ronon and Rodney should have reached the stargate by now and called in as they had agreed. She could not imagine what could have possibly slowed their progress.

John flicked his wrist as if to check the time on his non-existent timepiece. “Damn it.”

“Your watch and tags were not with our clothes and weapons. I did not have time to look for them.”

“I know,” he said.

“I doubt that the ralbrak you called Worf survived the explosion,” she said as a small comfort.

John nodded in agreement.

Minutes passed in companionable silence. He seemed to be breathing better. Maybe the tea had helped. She decided against ruining the peaceful moment by offering to check the bandage wrapped around his arm. It did not look like there was fresh blood seeping through and she expected help to arrive soon.

“What were you humming?” he asked.

“A tune my mother used to sing.”

“It’s nice,” he said.

Suddenly, he pressed his hand on the right side of his chest. Furrows of pain etched his face.

“What is wrong?” Teyla asked.

“Hurts,” he gasped.

“Maybe you do have a broken rib.” She moved closer, unsure what to do to help him.

The sky had turned a blue-black color. The sun must have completely disappeared over the horizon. But the trio of moons shone bright enough for her to see that John could not mask the agony that was draining the last dregs of strength from in his body.

“Feels like … stab… wound.” The soft spoken words stretched between pained breaths.

“I am sorry, but not enough time has passed yet for your next dose of pain medication.” Teyla tried to remember every bit of medical knowledge that she had learned from Carson. She recalled him mentioning that the strongest pain reliever they had in the medical kit depressed breathing. Despite how much she hated seeing John in pain, she could not take the risk of giving him something that would make it even harder for him to catch his breath.

“It’s … argh.” Whatever he had meant to say turned into muffled groans as he again pressed his hand against his chest.

His chest heaved in and out laboriously. The tendons in his neck tightened with the enormous effort. Her mind blank at what she could do to help him. A single thought repeated itself in a useless circuit: maybe a broken rib had pierced his lung.

“John?” She grasped his shoulders to support him. “John, look at me.”

Still heaving, he lifted his head. The panicked look in his eyes was something she had never seen before. Not even on that harrowing day when she and others in Atlantis had watched grainy video images of him being fed upon by a Wraith while Koyla made demands that Elizabeth could not possibly submit to.

She forced down her own terror to speak calmly. “Take one breath at a time, John. One at a time. You can do this.”

He held her gaze as he fought to form each gasping breath.

“In and out. That is good, John. In and out.” As she repeated the words over and over again, her mind frantically sorted through their meager inventory of medical supplies. There was nothing that she could use to help him breathe. “In and out. Do not give up.”

She thought that his pain had lessened somewhat when the tension in his body slackened off. But after the next belabored breath, his eyes rolled back and he slumped into her, heavy as a fallen log. She struggled to cushion his head as she shifted his unconscious body onto the ground.

Her own body aches forgotten, she moved quickly. She grabbed the comm and clicked it on. “Rodney, come in, Rodney.”

While she waited for an answer, she looked at John. Too much time was passing between each heave of his chest. “Rodney … Ronon. Please respond.”

Over and over, she repeated the call for help. She would not give up either.

Finally, she heard a crackle. “Teyla, this is Rodney. I just got through to Atlantis. They’re assembling a team and dialing back …”

Teyla interrupted him. “Tell them that they must hurry. John is struggling to breathe. ” Her voice was so fraught with fear that to her own ears she sounded like a scared child.

“What happened?”

“I do not know. One moment he was breathing well enough and the next he was in great pain, gasping for air.”

“Tell Sheppard to hold on,” Rodney said. “The Chevrons are locking in. We’ll be there in thirty, maybe twenty.”

Another glance at John told her that no matter how fast Lorne assembled a rescue team, the jumper would arrive too late.

Teyla centered herself with a deep breath. Succumbing to panic had no place in this situation. “Rodney, John is unconscious. Patch me through to Jennifer Keller.”

While she waited, Teyla grasped John’s wrist to feel his pulse. It was beating so fast that she had no trouble finding it.

“Teyla, this is Doctor Keller. What is the Colonel’s status?”

In a rush of words, Teyla described everything she knew about John’s injuries. “…. and after his breathing became more and more ragged, he lost consciousness.”

“How long has he been unconscious?”

“I am not certain. Maybe a quarter hour.”

“Are you sure that he complained of pain on the right side?”

“Yes. Before he lost consciousness, he clutched that side and said that it hurt like a stab wound. Now, each breath comes further and further apart. It sounds so ragged. His heart is beating very quickly.”

“We are not going to get there in time,” Jennifer said.

“I know,” Teyla said. “His lips are turning blue. You must tell me what to do.”

“Look for bruises or other injuries on his chest.”

Without wasting time, she pulled apart the flaps of his shirt. The few remaining buttons popped off. “I see three swollen welts the size of my thumb nail lined up and down the midline of his chest. The upper right side of his rib cage is covered by a deep purple bruise as wide as my hand.” She turned on the flashlight and moved John’s arm to get a clearer look. “He has another dark bruise midway between his armpit and hip bone.”

“Teyla, please place the communicator by his mouth so that I can listen.”

Teyla kept the communicator in position until she heard Jennifer’s voice calling her, then she put it back to her ear.

“Put your hand under the Colonel’s chin and very gently lift it up. Then, gently pull it forward. Now put the communicator back on his chest so that I can listen again.”

When Teyla returned the communicator back to her ear she heard Jennifer speak. “The stridor is gone. His airway is open, but he's still in distress.” Not many of those words made sense to Teyla. Jennifer was either talking aloud to herself or to one of her assistants in the jumper. “Teyla, put your head on the right side of his chest and listen to his breathing, then describe to me what you hear.”

With one ear on John’s chest, Teyla had to concentrate to ignore the harsh sounds she heard from the other ear. She placed the comm back on her ear. “I do not hear anything.”

“Are you sure that you don’t hear any breath sounds?” Jennifer asked.

“Yes, I am certain,” Teyla said.

“Now, put your head on the left side and tell me what you hear.”

“I… I do hear him breathing,” she said. That had to be a good thing. Maybe John could hold on until the jumper’s arrival.

“He probably has a tension pneumothorax. Push the communicator into his chest, right where you were listening.”

Teyla did as instructed and stopped when she heard Jennifer’s voice.

“The crackling I hear sounds like Sub-Q-Air which means that the Colonel has a collapsed lung. He needs a needle decompression STAT. One functioning lung is not enough to supply sufficient oxygen for his body,” Jennifer said. “Teyla, I am going to talk you through a simple procedure to release the air that is trapped around his lung. From the first aid kit, get the 14 gauge IV catheter, scissors, antiseptic wipes, and a glove.”

Well aware that she could not waste any time, Teyla grabbed the nearby bag. Ignoring the sharp pain in her hip, she kneeled next to John and followed Jennifer’s instructions step by step. Although some sounded quite strange. “Jennifer, I have cut off a finger from the glove and stuck the syringe through it as you asked.”

“Good. You just constructed the one-way valve you will need for the procedure.”

Teyla continued to file away all her questions for the future. “What should I do next?”

“With two fingers touch the midpoint of John’s right collarbone. Walk your fingers down from it. Push down hard so you can feel each rib. Move down two and stop.”

With fingers pressed against John’s feverish skin, Teyla traced the contours of his ribs. With John lying on his back, she did not have to exert much pressure to find them.

“Did you move down two ribs?” Jennifer said.

“I think so,” Teyla said. Then, she started doubting herself. “I am not certain.”

“Teyla, you have to be sure,” Jennifer said. She repeated the instructions.

Teyla went back down from the collarbone. “I am there.”

“Good. Now, slide your finger right underneath that rib. This is the second intercostal space,” Jennifer said. “Keep the syringe perpendicular to the chest and, with your other hand right above that finger, push the needle into his chest about the width of two fingers. You'll have to push hard to get through.”

Teyla’s hand refused to move. What would happen if she was in the wrong spot? Would she end up killing John instead of saving him? She thought she had followed Jennifer’s instructions to the letter, but she could have made a mistake.

As if she could sense her hesitation, Jennifer said, “Teyla, you have to do it, now.”

At that moment, Teyla realized that John had stopped breathing. His body lay completely still. All doubts drowned by desperation, she pushed the needle in. A thin veil of blood fanned out from the edges. A loud hiss broke the silence of the night. The piece of rubber flickered.

She placed the palm of her hand on his chest and felt its slow rise and fall.

“It worked. He is breathing again.” Teyla wiped away the tears of relief that were fogging her eyes.

“Good job,” Jennifer said. “Major Lorne says that we'll be there in six minutes. Make sure that the Colonel doesn’t move.”

“I will.”

After she pulled the leather jacket over John’s shoulder, an overwhelming sense of fatigue swept through her. Every nerve bundle in her body woke up to remind her of all the cuts and bruises she had accumulated during the past few days.

She touched the bandage on her hip. It came up bloody. She should tend to the reopened wound. Instead, shivering and dizzy, she huddled next to John. The heat radiating from his body warmed her. She remembered the comm in her ear and she reached to click it back on to tell Jennifer that something was wrong with her too. Before she could speak, the sharp stitch near her right hip exploded into a fireball of pain. Darkness overwhelmed her.

The next thing she heard were the sounds of many people trampling around the campsite. She opened her eyes. A moon twinkled in a fuzzy halo above her. She was on her back lying on something softer than the ground. She tried to rise up on her elbow to look for John.

“No, stay down,” said Jennifer. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

“It’s only a glancing wound …”she began to answer when an agonizing cramp strangled the breath out of her body. She turned on her side, clutching her lower abdomen. It felt as if claws were tearing her from the inside.

The rest of her body aches forgotten, she curled herself up into a ball to squash the pain. It did not help.

Gentle hands palpitated her body. “I don’t see another wound,” said a young woman’s voice that Teyla could not place, her memory scrambled by the grinding pain.

“Teyla, did you get hit in the belly?” Jennifer asked.

Unable to form words, Teyla shook her head. The claws in her gut tightened their clasp. She moaned.

“I am going to give you something for the pain,” Jennifer said.

Before she could summon the strength to ask about John, a pin prick on her arm flooded her body with a cooling sensation. Jennifer said something unintelligible. Then, everything disappeared into blissful nothingness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive all medical inaccuracies. I am not a medical professional. I just happened to watch part of a Grey’s Anatomy episode (season 11, episode-15) when Dr. Owen Hunt talks a little girl into performing a needle decompression on her mother in the aftermath of an earthquake. I also did some research on the web and I assumed that the first aid kit would have the proper medical supplies.


	14. Chapter 14

Before he cracked open his eyes, John felt Atlantis’ familiar feather-light ripple at the edges of his senses. It wasn’t anything he could see, smell, hear, or touch. It was all those things meshed together and powered to the nth degree. He knew no words to describe it properly. He shifted his gaze to see who was at his bedside. That slight motion pinged hot spots of pain along his back. He cleared his throat and asked, “Wha… what happened?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake. It’s the fourth time. What has Keller been pumping you up with?” With a huff, Rodney plopped his tablet on the side table. “What do you remember?”

“Uh,” John scrambled for an answer. His memories were fuzzy and disjointed. Hard to think with so many parts of his body complaining about whatever abuse they’d gone through. His left arm immobilized in a sling and the cannula puffing up his nose were minor nuisances compared to the disconcerting presence of a catheter. “Ah … we split up. You and Ronon went to the stargate to get reinforcements, and Teyla and I helped the villagers reach the caves. And then … uh … I don’t know.”

“Okay. That’s marginally better than the last time you woke up. But it’s actually the other way around. If I tell you again, are you going to remember it this time?”

“Geez, Rodney. How should I know?” Between Rodney and Elizabeth, John wasn’t sure who would win the prize for worst bedside manner. Why couldn’t he have woken up during Teyla or Ronon’s watch? Or had he?

“Yeah, right. Here’s the short version: you and Teyla were captured by a new group of evil beings who tortured you. You escaped in the Wraith Dart that had snatched me and Atlas over there. Once again you came back from the brink of death. And here we are. Does any of this sound familiar?”

Nothing rang a bell until a dim memory of piloting a Dart with Teyla snuggled up behind him surfaced in John’s head. Good. That hadn’t been a dream. “The Dart?”

“Okay. That’s progress, I guess. But really, how much of a one-track mind do you have, flyboy? You accidentally discover a new belligerent species. You let Teyla name it—for Pete’s sake. And all you remember is the Dart?”

John frowned as he tried to parse out Rodney’s words. “What species?”

“Amnesia it is, then.”

“Rodney, what species?”

“Explanations can wait. I’ve got to get Keller. Otherwise, she’ll start spewing some pseudoscientific gibberish about not overstressing her patients. She’s already mad at me about Ronon, but it’s not like I could have stopped him from trying to get out of bed.”

John turned his head to where Rodney’s chin was pointing. There was a sight to behold. The big guy was asleep, a heavy bandage wrapped around his head and his left leg, immobilized in a hip-to-ankle cast, stuck out of the blanket.

“Is he …?” he croaked.

“He’s going to be fine. A sequoia-sized tree crashed on him … well us —and he comes out of it with a concussion and a compound leg fracture. Keller is using some newfangled bone regeneration tech to accelerate the healing process.”

John didn’t have the strength to ask what Rodney and Ronon were doing in a forest, so he went for the simpler question that came to mind. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Rodney said. “He pushed me out of the way. I almost broke my arm falling to the ground.” Rodney pulled up his sleeve revealing a faded yellow patch of skin. “Look at the size of this bruise! I mean … Yes, granted, he put his life on the line for me twice in a day—although, technically speaking it was on different days, since we were in the Dart materializer buffer for about sixty-five hours—and he did save me from getting my skull crushed. But come on. Look at this hideous thing.”

John suddenly got a very bad feeling. He tried to sit up. “Teyla?”

Rodney put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t you dare move or Keller will kill me. Teyla is fine now. She got out of Keller’s clutches about four days ago. We’ve been taking turns sitting vigil for you two.”

“Thanks.” John let his head sink down in to the pillow. He hoped that his face didn’t show how much that small motion hurt him.

“Don’t mention it. Teyla will be back in a couple of hours.” Rodney brought over a cup with a straw. “Here, take a few sips and then I’ll go get the Doc.”

Maybe Rodney’s bedside manner wasn’t so bad after all, John thought as he drew water up from the straw. The moisture soothed his cracked lips.

Once Rodney stepped out of the room, John said, “Hey, Ronon. Why are you faking sleep?”

“Because I’m tired of talking to Rodney. I’ve been stuck here for days with no escape.”

“You did save his life.”

“Don’t remind me,” Ronon said.

“Nice work.”

Ronon shrugged. “He almost passed out when he saw the bone poking out of my leg. And you should’ve seen the look on his face when I told him that he would have to find his way to the stargate by himself to get help. It was almost worth breaking my leg.”

“Really?”

“No. And not worth the concussion—except for when I threw up on Rodney’s boots. That was funny. And then I was stuck in a semi-dark room for three days.”

Before John could ask for a full sit-rep, Keller walked in.

“Hello, Colonel Sheppard.” Keller pulled close the privacy screen between his bed and Ronon’s.

“Hi, Doc,” John said.

“Glad to see that you are much more alert than the last time you woke up.” Keller read the console for the Ancient medical scanner. “Your vitals are significantly improved. Lung function is back within normal parameters and the blood work shows no residual signs of septicemia.” She fished out her stethoscope from her lab coat. “Let me take an old-fashioned listen to your lungs to confirm that we can dispense with the extra oxygen.”

“And the tubing down under?”

“One thing at a time, Colonel,” she said.

John surprised himself by not arguing. He remained silent while she carried out the exam. Instead, he contemplated the healing abrasions on his wrists and willed them to trigger a memory, even if it was doomed to be unpleasant. Nothing. Time for some deductive reasoning. In his unfortunately expert opinion, the extent of the damage meant that he had either aggressively fought his restraints or his body had been involuntarily and repeatedly pushed against them with a great force. Or both. And then there were the bruises, welts, and irregular shaped burn marks dotting small hairless patches on his good arm. Weird and disturbing.

A bright light above the bed flicked on. As if the temperature had suddenly dropped to a bitter chill, John shivered. When Keller finished auscultating his chest, he pulled up the blanket.

“Sorry, I should have warmed up the stethoscope’s diaphragm.”

“It’s fine,” he said and he wasn’t lying. The stethoscope had nothing to do with it. The cold sensation had come from within his body. He recognized it for what it was: a flashback. Of what, he had no idea.

“Breath sounds are clear. No need for this.” Keller removed the cannula and placed it on the bedside tray. She raised the head of the bed and helped him get comfortable. “In a few minutes, Marie will come in to help me change the dressing on your arm and back.”

“Give it to me straight, Doc,” he said.

Keller looked ready to dodge the question, but changed her mind. “You have been very ill for the past five days. Soon after we brought you back to Atlantis, we had to put you in a medically induced coma and on mechanical ventilation to help your body fight off septicemia and acute respiratory distress syndrome caused by a severe case of aspiration-induced pneumonia.”

“Aspiration-induced?”

“At some point during your captivity, you inhaled vomit and other undetermined fluids which caused the pneumonia. You also had two bruised but not fractured ribs, and localized internal injuries caused by intrusive alien devices. Some of these internal injuries became the focal points of opportunistic infections that have responded to the intravenous antibiotics that you are still receiving.” She pointed to the IV bag hanging off the pole next to the bed. “Yesterday, we weaned you off the respirator and tapered off the sedatives.”

“And my arm?”

“Your captors extracted your transmitter in an unorthodox way which caused a deep wound and muscle damage which are now healing nicely. Your arm is in a sling because Doctor Yakoviz, the orthopedic surgeon, performed laparoscopic surgery to seal together a glenoid labrum tear in your shoulder cartilage. We’re using a special cocktail of recombinant growth factors to accelerate the cartilage regeneration. We’re collapsing into two weeks a process that normally takes six to nine months. Everything is healing well. You have made remarkable progress and are on your way to a full recovery.”

Rodney poked his head through the opening in the screen. “What about his amnesia? Could he have brain damage? Who knows how long he’d stopped breathing before Teyla stabbed the needle through his chest to bring him back.”

“She did what?” John’s voice squeaked.

“Rodney, like I told you before, there is no brain damage,” Keller said. “Colonel Sheppard’s neurological scans are completely normal. Retrograde amnesia is quite common in people subjected to the level of trauma that he went through.”

“I was just …” Rodney started to say.

“Rodney,” John cut him off with that word and a glare.

“Okay, I am going to go grab some lunch and go back to the lab. I have a lot of work to do with those gadgets you brought back from the ralbrak ship,” ” Rodney said as he made a quick retreat. “I’ll see you later.”

“Wow,” Keller said. “I’m impressed, Colonel. Someday, you’ll have to teach me how to do that.”

“You’ll get the hang of handling Rodney quickly.” He wasn’t pandering to her. Just a few minutes before, he had experienced firsthand that she was no pushover.

“I hope so,” she said.

“You did a fine job kicking him out of the infirmary,” he said. He noticed Marie trying to keep a straight face as she gathered supplies from drawers and cabinets.

Keller cracked a smile and then turned back to consult the monitor. “Let’s get back to your exam.”

“What’s a ralbrak?” John asked.

“It’s what Teyla called the aliens that kidnapped your team. You should ask her how she came up with it. Her stories about Athosian culture are fascinating. I don’t know why Rodney has been complaining about that name for days.” She paused and added, “Maybe it’s his way of distracting himself from worrying about his injured teammates.”

“I hate to break it to you, Doc. Complaining is second nature to Rodney—like sharks need to swim to breathe.”

“I’m starting to realize that might be true,” she said.

“What did he mean about Teyla and the needle?” he asked.

Keller’s tone turned serious. “I don’t want to overwhelm you with information. I can see that you’re already getting tired and will soon need your next dose of pain meds. On a scale of one to ten, what is your pain level?”

“Two.”

“Colonel, with all due respect, that’s not going to work for me,” she said. “You’ll have to be honest if you expect to get out of my infirmary any time soon. So let’s try it again. On a one-to-ten scale?”

“Fo…. six,” he said. “Please tell me what happened.”

“Just a minute.” Keller murmured something in Marie’s ear and the nurse left the room. Keller continued talking. “While Major Lorne’s rescue jumper was in transit to your campsite, you suffered a tension pneumothorax. Your right lung collapsed and you went into severe respiratory distress. The jumper wasn’t going to reach you in time. I talked Teyla through performing an emergency needle decompression. She did an admirable job in quickly releasing the air trapped in your thoracic cavity. As I told Rodney, several times already, the amnesia is common. Some memories will come back, but some won’t, and—to be honest—that might not be a bad thing.”

“Yeah,” John said.

“I’ll perform a complete set of neurological tests later. But don’t worry, according to the Ancient’s scanners all your higher brain functions match your pre-mission ones.”

John didn’t stay awake for much longer after that. Keller and Marie’s fussing about him drained him of energy and the next dose of meds obliterated his aches and pains.

Later, he woke up to the rustle of pages turning. Teyla sat at his bedside reading a paperback. All he could see of the well-worn cover was an artificially hairless and impressively muscular six-pack set of abs.

He wanted to say something witty about her literary preferences, but he came up with a total blank. Maybe he had suffered brain damage.

Teyla looked up and smiled. “Hello, John.”

“Hi. Good book?”

“I am not certain. I have just started it and parts of it are confusing. The two main characters hate each other at the same time as they lust for each other. It does not seem realistic.”

“Huh. I wouldn’t know.”

“I would not expect you to. I will ask Laura about it. She lent me the book.”

“Great idea.” Cadman’s reading preferences were none of his business. Absolutely not. No matter how tempting it was to tease her about them.

Teyla might have said something else, but he wasn’t listening. A vivid image had crystallized in his mind. Teyla cross-legged on the ground next to him. He gasped.

“Are you in pain? Should I get Marie?”

“No. I—I just remembered a campfire. You gave me a cup of something.”

“A soothing bark tea to ease your cough.”

“It was disgusting.” That memory popped out of nowhere.

“It was foul tasting enough for you to remember.” She made it sound as if that was a great accomplishment. “I did not have the necessary ingredients to sweeten it. But it made you breathe a little better. At least for a short while.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“You are welcome.”

“I don’t mean just for the tea.”

“You do not need to say anything more. I understand.”

Without him having to ask, she helped him sip some water. The four of them in his team were old hands at tending to each other’s infirmary stays. Not that long ago, Teyla had been the one laid out in the infirmary. At that memory, he felt a pit in his stomach. It wasn’t from hunger. John looked around the room, as if searching for the most recently minted ghost.

“What is the matter, John?” said Teyla.

“It finally hit me.”

In her uncanny way, she picked up the tread of a conversation started weeks before when she’d been the one in bed. He’d been decked out in his blues for a memorial. “I too still feel a great sadness,” she said. “Jennifer has proven very capable in taking over Carson’s duties here in the infirmary, but his absence always strikes me doubly hard when I am here.”

He nodded. “Carson …. His voice had a way of cheering people up, even with the worst news.”

“He did. It was something about the cadence of his speech that I always found endearing. And little things such as the way he would call most of his patients: son, laddie, or lassie, despite the minor age differences.”

“Yeah, even burly marines.”

“Yes. And there was an expression that Carson used very frequently. I never quite understood it. Something about a bug?

“Little bugger, daft bugger,” he said. “Nothing to do with bugs.”

“What does bugger refer to, then?”

He was so not talking about that with Teyla. “Ah, I’m not sure. It’s a Scottish thing.”

Only because he was so well-versed in Teyla mannerisms, he caught the slightest brow furrow that indicated that she didn’t buy that explanation. He probably only got away with it because of the whole almost dying thing.

“Perhaps you should rest a little. As Carson used to say, you look a wee bit peakish.” Her Scottish accent was surprisingly good—a talent he hadn’t seen before.

“Funny. I wanted to—” he started to say but then Marie walked in with a tray of food. The chance for more conversation ended. He would have liked Teyla to help him fill-in the huge void in his memories. Also, even though he couldn’t remember anything specific, he had a weird sense that something had shifted between the two of them. As if, together they had passed some sort of test that went beyond managing to live another day.

“I will be back later. Would you like me to bring you anything?” Teyla asked.

“No, thanks.” Requesting real food would be futile under Marie’s watch.

“I am very happy that you are feeling better,” Teyla said as she walked out.

\----------------------------------------

Another week passed before Keller finally released him from the infirmary. John couldn’t wait to get out of there—forced immobility was not his thing. The days had dragged on excruciatingly slowly. Nothing but long stretches of boredom intermingled with confusing and often horrific snippets of memories that burst out of nowhere—like flashbangs in his brain.

He had plenty of time to piece them together to form a pretty clear picture of what happened on that ralbrak ship. His memories of the torture and pain remained fuzzy, but not other things. He was definitely keeping out of his mission report a confession that Teyla had found him in the nick of time before he’d gone off into a grief-anger fueled suicidal revenge spree. He wanted to keep his mandatory sessions with Heightmeyer to the minimum needed to get the sign-off to return to duty.

While Keller was no Carson Beckett, she sure had excellent medical tricks up her sleeve. Besides a scratchy throat and sore arm, physically he felt tired but surprisingly good. One thing, though, if Carson had been around, John would not have been able to get out of the infirmary without an escort to deliver him directly to his quarters—no stops—and safely tuck him in bed. Keller didn’t know better, so she let John go with his reassurance that he would rest better in his own room. He hadn’t mentioned that he planned a short detour.

John wanted to check on Teyla. She’d visited him every day, brought him the few favorite foods that Keller permitted, and chatted with him pleasantly. But he could tell there was something wrong. She moved stiffly and it wasn’t just because of the wound from the ralbrak gun (in his book, a much better name than he or, God forbid, Rodney could have come up). She looked as if she hadn’t had a decent night sleep in way too long. Beautiful as ever, but far from normal cool, serene Teyla.

Stuck without any privacy, John had no chance to cajole her into telling him the truth about whatever was troubling her. When he had asked Keller, she had given him the vaguest response—something like Teyla would be on light duty for another week. That hadn’t been his concern.

John nodded at a trio of scientists that he passed on his way to the transporter. On the next level, a marine—clearly fresh off the boat—saluted him, even though he wasn’t in uniform, just his black shirt and sweatpants. He nodded an acknowledgement and took the left corridor.

He pressed the buzzer by the door and waited. When the door slid open and he saw who’d let him in, everything that he’d planned to say slipped away.

“Uh, hi, Elizabeth. Hi, Teyla,” he said.

“Hello, John. I see that Dr. Keller sprung you from the infirmary.” Elizabeth gave him an analytical appraisal. “Or … you didn’t sneak out? Did you?”

“No, of course not. She let me go with a long list of Dos and Don’ts,” John said. He didn’t mention that on top of the list of Dos was go directly to his quarters and get some rest. He was doing as instructed—Teyla’s quarters were on the way to his, sort of. He still hadn’t figured out why he had gotten such a bad reputation. He hadn’t made a career of escaping the infirmary.

“Well, it’s good to see you up and about,” Elizabeth said.

“Thanks. I didn’t mean to interrupt,” John said.

“I was just leaving.” Elizabeth turned to look at Teyla. “Would you like to meet at the usual time for dinner?”

“Certainly, Elizabeth,” Teyla said.

“Great. See you in the mess hall,” Elizabeth said as she walked out.

John remained standing by the doorway.

“Please sit down, John,” Teyla said. “I too am glad that you are well enough to leave the infirmary.”

“Me, too. I was bored out of my mind.” Since he was too sore to sit on the floor, he strategically avoided the plush pillows on the floor and opted to sit in one of the two chairs by the table next to the window. There was no way he was going to sit on her bed. That seemed too personal.

“Would you like some tea?” Teyla stepped next to her cupboard. She looked pale.

“As long as it’s not that bark tea.”

“Of course not,” she said.

“Then, I’d love a good cup of tea.” As he said that, a strange sense of déjà vu struck him. “Wow, it’s been what? Three years almost to the dot.”

Teyla frowned for a moment before her face broke into a bright smile. “Yes, three years since we shared that first cup of tea in Athos. Right after you told me about your fondness for Ferris Wheels, college football, and anything that moves fast. ”

“You still remember the stupid stuff I said.”

“It was not stupid, John,” Teyla said. “Although I did not comprehend the words, I understood that you had gifted me with a piece of yourself so that you were no longer a stranger to me. It was a promising start to a friendship.”

“Yeah, except for that waking up the Wraith fiasco.”

“Do not do that to yourself,” she said. “First of all, you must not forget that it was Colonel Sumner’s decision to explore the old city despite our warnings that the Wraith would come. Second, the Wraith would have awakened regardless of whether or not you had come to rescued us. Their caretaker queen would have discovered the location of a new rich feeding ground from Colonel Sumner.”

“Sumner was a very tough nut to crack. A marine through and through, trained to withstand torture and die rather than give up any information. He did die.”

“I do not doubt Sumner’s courage and determination. But he could not have been trained to withstand the mind-controlling power of a Wraith queen. Given enough time, she would have broken through his will power. You know this to be true.”

“Maybe.” John had been lucky that his encounters with Wraith queens had always been conveniently cut short. “But there wasn’t time. He was dying. He would have let her suck him dry rather than betray us.”

“I believe that the Queen would not have killed him off quickly. She would have recognized his value and ...” she hesitated.

“Go on,” John said. The conversation had gone off on an unexpected tangent. “What’s on your mind?”

“I have spoken to relatives and friends of Wraith worshipers who were absolutely convinced that the people they knew would never have voluntarily become the fanatic pets of Wraith. Yet, they did. I had long wondered about what could have made them turn so. I found no reasonable explanation until Kolya’s Wraith returned to you the life he had drained from you. I am certain that the Wraith would use this remarkable ability as a weapon. Would you agree?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“I understand why you would not.”

“Yeah,” John ran a hand through his hair. “Now that you mention it, you’re probably right. And the Wraith said that there are many things we don’t know about them.”

Teyla prepared the tea as she spoke. “What if they use this ability to take and return life to control people?”

“Isn’t that a big assumption?”

Teyla shook her head. “At first, it seemed far-fetched. Now, I believe that it is possible this might be how the Wraith turn into Wraith worshipers people who otherwise have countless reasons to hate and fear them. If so, the queen would have kept on extracting Sumner’s life and giving it back until she broke his mind and divulged all the information she wanted. Then, she would have awakened the others and found a way to Earth.”

“You really thought this through,” he said.

“Yes, I have.”

“If you’re right about this, it’s going to be a big problem for us.”

“I believe so too, but there is nothing to be done about it now.” Teyla poured tea into their cups. “I am sorry I brought this up. You should not have to think about such things so soon during your recuperation. Speaking of which, I am surprised that Jennifer did not send you directly to your quarters to rest. Or did she?”

“Well, I stopped here on the way to my quarters, and drinking tea with you is very restful. How’s your hip?”

Teyla smiled at him. “Almost completely healed. Jennifer said that I should be able to return to sparring in a few days. Ronon, on the other hand, is not allowed to fully put weight on his leg for at least one more week.”

“He’s pretty bummed about that.” John took a couple of sips to gather his courage before continuing, “Please, Teyla, tell me what’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… no offense, but you look like you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in days.”

“I have been sleeping poorly. Sometimes I wake up with the scent of the ralbrak ship filling my nostrils, choking me. I have also dreamt about the laboratories full of body parts that I searched while looking for you. The eyes were the worst.” She turned her gaze away from his and stared at her cup of tea. “I have a recurring nightmare where I am back in the ralbrak ship. In an endless laboratory, I am scrutinizing shelves and shelves stocked with countless jars full of eyes bobbing in blood-tinged liquids. When I find yours, Rodney, or Ronon’s, I wake-up with my heart pounding in my chest.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It is nothing compared to what you went through,” she said. After a minute she added. “Do the ralbrak haunt your dreams too?”

“No,” he said.

“That is fortunate,” she said.

After the personal stuff she had shared with him, he felt compelled tell her one of his deepest secrets. “When I’m in Atlantis, I don’t dream.”

“Never?”

“Never. Or, at least, I never remember any dreams.”

“That is strange.”

“I think it’s related to the ATA gene stuff. I haven’t told anyone else about this. The point is that here I sleep like a baby.”

“That is a wonderful thing,” she said. “What happens when you are not in Atlantis?”

“I have dreams and nightmares like anyone else.”

“So you should enjoy the peaceful rest while you can.”

“Yes.” Although she didn’t ask him why the big secret, he wanted to explain himself to her. She made it easy for him to open up, even if just a crack. “I don’t want people to know about this because I don’t want to be studied. This dream shield or whatever it is doesn’t have any strategic value.”

“I wonder if other ATA gene carriers have experienced this phenomenon,” she said.

“I’d thought about asking Carson but there always seemed to be something else more important to think about.”

“I understand. Your secret is safe with me,” she said.

“I know.”

“What do you remember?” she asked.

“Weird horrible smells. A freezing sensation. Clicking sounds and other mechanical noises.” He skipped mentioning the pain and screams.

“For me, talking about it with Kate has been very helpful. But, as she says, it will take time.”

“Heightmeyer does know her stuff,” he said. He sensed that she hadn’t told him the full story. “Look, Teyla. You know I’m here if you need someone else to talk to. I’m not good at talking, but I’m a good listener.”

“Thank you, John,” she said. “Have you spoken with her yet?”

“She stopped by the infirmary a few times to check in on me. I’ll see her in her office tomorrow.” Self-recognized hypocrite that he was, John didn’t look forward to those mandatory psych eval sessions. They were a necessary evil that he had to get through to get reinstated to full duty.

“Good,” she said.

John couldn’t figure out a smooth way of mentioning that the part that he remembered the best was the flight in the Dart with her. He had thought about that closeness quite a bit (sometimes to drown out Rodney’s well-meaning but incessant talk). He could no longer escape the fact that he had feelings for her beyond their tight platonic friendship. Just like that manipulative twerp, Thalen, had said last year: he did care for her. But he didn’t have a clue if she felt the same. And he couldn’t risk being wrong. It would ruin their friendship. His experience with Nancy and the other women who had since thrown themselves at him (for whatever reason) had clarified beyond a reasonable doubt how much he sucked at relationships.

So he fought off the impulse to pull her into his arms and hold her. “Huh, I should go, before Keller sends out nurse Ratched to bring me my meds and discovers that I’m not resting in my room.”

“Who is nurse Ratched?”

“She’s a character from a movie called _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_. Maybe I could dig up the DVD,” John said. “Better not. I don’t think you’d like it.”

Like a fumbling idiot, he left without much more than a lame goodbye. At least, he got back to his quarters before Marie (the polar opposite of nurse Ratched) stopped by, ostensibly to check that he had remembered to take his next dose of pain meds. He pretended to fall for that line and not be ticked off that Keller was making sure that he was following her instructions.

For a while, he read and reread the same two pages of _War and Peace._ His mind kept on circling around the words he should have spoken instead of the idiotic things he had said. Mercifully, at some point he fell asleep and stayed that way until Rodney stopped by to drag him to the mess hall for some chow. He ate heartily and snuck enough furtive glances at Teyla to confirm that something else was bothering her. He was also pretty sure that both Ronon and Rodney were in the know.

After dinner, John begged off movie night and went back to his quarters. Despite his unplanned nap, he was beat. Before going to sleep, he took his first solo shower in two weeks. He adjusted the water to be hotter than usual to soothe his sore body. He was just taking the minimum pain meds to ratchet down the hurt to a tolerable level. He’d had enough of being doped up.

As the hot water rained down his head, he lathered the soap. With soapy fingers, he traced the tender ridges of his new scars. Ever since he woke up in the infirmary the snatches of memories of how he got the scars had come to him at the oddest moments. Once when he overheard Keller speak to another patient; another time when an orderly dropped a tray on the floor. The bits were jumbled. They haunted his awake time, but as he’d told Teyla, not his sleep. Not here in Atlantis.

After he toweled off, he put on the usual pair of sweatpants he slept in. Instead of his comfy t-shirt, he slipped on a well-worn black button-down shirt gently using the minimal shoulder motions that he was allowed to make. “Don’t raise your arm over 45 degrees,” both Keller and Marie had cautioned him repeatedly. Then it was time for the sling which kept his arm bound across his stomach. Over the past several days, he had grown to despise the contraption, but the alternative was worse. When not supported, the tender areas of regenerating tissue in his arm and shoulder stung. Keller had warned him that, if he didn’t take proper care, they might not heal correctly. That sort of disability would disqualify him for flight and combat duty. He dreaded the prospect of being permanently grounded and sent back to Earth. Away from Atlantis and everyone who really mattered to him.

He was brushing his teeth when the door chime sounded. The sensors told him who was on the other side. A pleasant surprise. He spat out the toothpaste and quickly rinsed his mouth.

“Come in,” he said.

The door slid open at his silent command.


	15. Chapter 15

One way or another, Teyla had to find out where she stood with John. Preferably, before she did something impulsive that she might later have cause to regret. She already had a very close call the previous day when she accompanied Jennifer on a medical visit to New Athos. They had a chance meeting with Kanaan, a childhood friend who had left old Athos years before. Far from the annoying boy of their shared past, Kanaan had grown into an attractive, charming man. A man who had made a subtle yet persuasive argument for the two of them to rekindle their friendship in a more adult way. With the traditional Athosian wording, he had asked her to explore together the possibility of a more enduring relationship.

After her initial surprise, she had been tempted. Despite the wonderful friendships she had developed in Atlantis, a heavy sense of loneliness had taken root in her heart, especially after the recent deaths and her team’s close call with the ralbrak. Part of her had wanted to tell Jennifer that she would return to Atlantis the next day and another part had countered that she was being too hasty. She had listened to the latter. With the excuse that she had to check on her injured teammates, she left Kanaan with a promise to consider his offer and soon give him an answer.

Earlier today, when John had stopped by her quarters, her hope for clarity had been dashed by the strange twists and turns of their conversation. At one point, he had seemed on the verge of expressing some feelings towards her. Her initial impression had been that the sweet and fumbling way he acted towards her spoke volumes. But then he hadn’t, and when she carefully replayed the scene in her head, doubts bubbled up. How could one man be so infuriatingly enigmatic and endearing at the same time? To be fair, though, she had not made herself clear either. This was all going to change.

Her mind made up, she strode into John’s quarters.

“Hi, Teyla,” John said.

With firm resolve, she did not get distracted by the sight of his wet hair dripping on the collar of his unbuttoned shirt. For a man who a week before had been at death’s door, he looked mighty fine. “Good evening. I apologize for disturbing you when you are preparing to go to sleep.”

“No problem. Are you okay?”

“I am fine.” Like startled birds, her carefully prepared words fled from her head. In lieu of talking, she stepped in front of him, inclined her head, and waited.

John hesitated only a second before responding in kind. They stood in silence, warm foreheads touching. She breathed in the scents of toothpaste, soap, and shampoo. Clean John. Both of them light years away from the sweat, stench, gore, and other horrors of the ralbrak ship. Both of them safe and alive.

When she broke off the Athosian greeting, she did not move away. Instead, she wrapped him in an embrace, her head against his shoulder, careful not to put pressure on his healing wounds.

At first, he tensed up. Then, he slid his healthy arm up her back. She matched the rhythm of his breathing and basked in their closeness. Ever since their return to Atlantis, she had craved for something to squash the deep chill that at odd times would permeate out from within her marrow. That something had been human contact. Or rather, contact with this particular human.

For the first time in a long while, she felt solid and grounded, no longer strewn asunder by the whims of stranger’s machinations and bad luck. This was a good start to what she sought. She hoped that he was of the same mind. Either way she would know.

“Teyla … I …”

“Please wait.” She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. “I will speak first. After this.” She rose on her tiptoes and kissed him.

Stiff at first, his mouth softened in response. He countered her playful nibbles. She savored the contrast between the softness of his lips and the scruffiness of his chin. Her fingertips swept up his jawline to meet at the nape of his neck. She nudged him closer and deepened the kiss. His breath hitched. She lost time in the swirl of sensations until he pulled back.

“Wow,” he said.

“Better than the other time?” Although it was true, she immediately regretted saying it. The last thing she wanted to do was embarrass him with a reminder of the voracious kiss he had pressed on her while under the influence of the Iratus bug bite.

“What? Oh.” His light frown was quickly erased by a smile. “Yeah, no comparison. But …”

“Before you object, I want to tell you my thoughts on this.”

“This?”

“This thing between us.”

“There’s a thing?” he asked.

“That is what I would like to find out,” she said.

“Oh. Sit, please.” John waved her toward the chairs by the window.

“Thank you.” She settled on the soft cushion.

Instead of taking the chair next to hers, John sat on the end of the bed facing her. The large picture of his favorite musician loomed on the wall behind him. The towering man was gazing up at the sky. Perhaps looking for inspiration for a new song. Perhaps looking to make a change in his life.

She took a deep breath and started with the words she had planned. “You, Rodney, Ronon, and I are a tight team. Over countless missions in the past years, we have developed deep bonds of trust and friendship. Ronon and Rodney are like brothers to me.” She paused before adding. “You are not.”

He waved his hands in mock horror. “Don’t tell me I’m like a crazy cousin.”

“I am not joking,” she said. “I care for you more deeply than a brother or a crazy cousin.”

“That’s a relief.”

“To be perfectly clear, I am attracted to you emotionally and physically.”

“Oh.” He blushed.

The room suddenly felt warmer than a moment before. “And I think that you might feel the same way. Am I wrong?”

John blinked once before answering. “No, you aren’t. I—I do care for you and not like a sister or crazy cousin.”

“I am glad.” She moved to sit at his side and kissed him again. The taste of those lips was hard to resist.

Once again too soon, he tore his mouth away from her. “God, Teyla. Don’t get me wrong—this is amazing. It really is. But … I’m not sure we should be doing this.”

“Why not, if we are both attracted to each other? I told you I am, and you have admitted it, too.”

“But it doesn’t mean we should act on it,” he said.

“What is there to stop us, if it is something we both want?”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It is as simple as we make it.” She took his hand and entwined her fingers with his. He posed no resistance. “I am tired of pushing my desires aside to wait for a better moment. A moment which might never come. All four of us almost died on the ralbrak ship. Our lives are always on the line. I do not begrudge that this is what we must do to protect our people and survive. However, while I do not fear death, I have become afraid that I am letting my life slip by without fully living it. Do you ever feel that way?”

He did not answer right away. His eyes fled her gaze to look out the window. “I dunno. I hadn’t thought much about it.”

“I have. Especially lately. And I have decided to do something about it. That is why I came here tonight.” She dropped his hand as if to set him free in case he decided to bolt. “John, I have been attracted to you ever since the first time we met. For a long time, I explained my feelings away as a simple infatuation with an exotic-looking, charming stranger.”

“Exotic?

“Yes, exotic,” she stood firm on that. “Perhaps on your planet there are many men who look like you. But in Pegasus, mischievous hazel eyes and unruly black hair are rare.”

His cheeks flushed to a healthier color. He ran his fingers through his hair. “Uh. Thanks.”

“Instead of withering away, my fondness for you endured and grew from simple infatuation into something more profound. Sometimes I saw what I thought were hints that you might feel the same way, but I was never certain ...” She sighed not sure if she should mention an incident that had nagged at her for the past year. “To be honest, even though I tried to ignore it, my impressions must have had also been fed by Thalen and what he said.”

“That I cared for you more than you knew?”

“Yes,” she said, relieved to hear that he too had not forgotten.

“He was trying to stop you from shooting him … us,” John said.

“I am sorry about … that,” she said.

“Don’t be. Pulling the trigger would’ve been the right thing to do.”

She did not dispute that. “I do not know how I could have gone on living afterwards.”

“I’m glad it didn’t come to that.” His grin was infectious.

“So am I,” she said. “Afterwards, I was so shaken and relieved, that I forgot to ask you about those words. Then, for a long time, I had hoped that you would say something.”

“I should’ve. I couldn’t …”

Teyla mulled over John’s words. Although sparse, she found them encouraging. “On the day she died, Harriet had warned me that you would not make the first move. She said that you were probably oblivious to the whole thing and suggested that I should be the one to approach you. When I told her that I would not consider that, she offered to drop some hints.”

The pain of that day tinged his voice. “I’m sorry she didn’t get the chance.”

Teyla wiped away a tear. “I miss her and Carson, Charin, Lieutenant Ford, and so many others.”

John wrapped his arm around her. “Me too.”

They sat silently, Teyla wrapped in the nook of his arm.

“This must be very uncomfortable for you,” she said after a few minutes.

“It’s fine.”

“At the very least, you should be sitting up on the bed with your back propped by pillows.” When she stood up, she felt a sharp stitch in her side. She pressed her hand against it to squelch the sting.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“I am fine.”

“You’re in pain,” he said.

“The pain has passed. I should not have moved so brusquely. I am almost completely healed,” she said.

John looked unconvinced. “What happened? I thought you got zapped on the thigh, not there.”

“This injury was not caused by a ralbrak gun.”

“So, how did you get hurt?”

The conversation had gotten away from her, off on an unwanted tangent she did not want to explore. “I will tell you tomorrow. It is late. You should be sleeping to regain your strength.”

“I had a nap. I’m fine,” he said.

He continued to cajole her until she relented. They compromised. They ended up sitting side by side on the bed, leaning against the extra pillows she had found in his closet.

He did not interrupt her while she told him what the ralbrak had done to her before they tried to kill her in the recycling chamber. Since it was very difficult for her to say aloud that those beings had removed her left ovary, she kept the account factual, like a mission report.

“Because I had no external wound or incision, Jennifer speculated that to extract the … the ovary they might have used their beaming technology. Whatever they did partly cauterized the tissue so that the internal bleeding was very slow at first. I only felt a slight cramp and thought nothing of it while I was searching for you and during our escape. I only felt a burst of pain after I heard you breathing again.” Her eyes drifted down to the spot on his chest where she had stuck him with the needle.

“God, Teyla. Those b—butchers ... I’m so sorry.” He lightly caressed her hand.

“They did worse to you.”

“Still … Are you … uh, I mean are you okay?” he asked.

“Physically, I am almost completely recovered. Mentally, I am furious. Strangely enough, I feel more violated by what they stole from me than their attempt to kill me.” She brushed a strand of hair off her face.

“I get that,” he said.

“I knew you would,” she said. So as not to further upset both of them (this was not the topic for a romantic encounter), she stopped herself from blurting out her deepest fear that the ralbrak would run nefarious experiments on the eggs from her stolen ovary. During previous long nights, she felt as if she would go mad thinking about the worst possibilities.

“We’ll find that ship and blow it to smithereens,” he said.

“Yes, we must. Rodney, Radek, and many others are working on it. For now, I would rather spend my time on other things.”

“Me too.” He squelched a yawn.

She glanced at the clock by his bed side, surprised by the late hour. “I should go so that you can sleep.” She made a motion to stand up.

He did not let go of her hand. “Please, stay. We haven’t finished talking about the other thing.”

“Thing?”

“The thing about us. If there is an Us.”

“I would like there to be an Us.”

“I would too, but … you know that I was married, right?”

She nodded. “You let that information slip out on a long sleepless mission. You mentioned that your marriage was dissolved by a legal process called divorce. This means you are free to engage in relations with others.”

“Yeah. But it also means that I suck at relationships. Nancy and I only lasted three years, and only the first year was good. I don’t want to hurt you. I couldn’t stand losing what we have.”

“If anything will work between us, it will depend on both of us,” she said. “Together we will make it work if we want it enough. We should be honest with each other and not rush things.”

“No secrets,” he said. “Nancy hated that I couldn’t tell her about my missions.”

“Since we work together that will not be a problem with us,” she said.

“There are also chain of command issues to think about.”

“Elizabeth explained the rule forbidding relationships between officers and their subordinates. I am not your subordinate. I am a civilian contractor like Ronon. This means that I am not in your direct chain of command. Listen, John. There are many things that we will need to work through. None of them need to be resolved tonight.”

“I’ll have to tell Elizabeth soon,” he said.

“I will talk to her first, leader to leader. Actually, we have already discussed this a few times—in hypothetical terms, of course.” She smiled as she remembered how Elizabeth had surprised her. “It was rather amusing. She assumed that we had already bedded each other.”

“Why would she think that?” He sounded scandalized.

Teyla shrugged. “Apparently, it is a widely spread rumor in Atlantis.” She gave him her best impression of a wickedly alluring look. “Perhaps, we might as well make it true.”

She enjoyed the sound of his laughter.

For the first time since the ralbrak travail, Teyla slept peacefully despite John’s cramped bed. Or, rather, because of it.

\----------------------

A few days later at breakfast, Rodney was more talkative than usual. Teyla found it difficult to follow his diatribe about a movie that he and Ronon had watched the previous night. Ronon—the person that might have contributed to the conversation or, more likely, stopped it at its inception—was late because he had managed to convince Jennifer to remove his cast earlier than planned.

“If the movie was so crappy, why did you watch it?” John asked.

“It had its merit despite the cheesy special effects and preposterous science,” Rodney said.

“By merit you mean beautiful women,” John said.

“No. The plot—yes, the plot was very exciting. I bet you’re sorry that you missed it.”

“Not really,” John said.

As he rattled off an account of the movie, Rodney seemed oblivious of the surreptitious glances that Teyla and John were exchanging. Teyla had to look down at her food to stop herself from bursting into laughter.

“Now that I think of it, your escape from the alien ship also sounds like the plot of a cheesy sci-fi B movie. The heroes, treated like lab rats by evil aliens, rise up and avenge themselves against their captors. They would call it something like, _Revenge of the Lab Rats_.”

“We were not avenging ourselves. We were trying to escape to save our lives,” Teyla said.

“Okay then,” Rodney said. “How about, _The Specimen Strikes Back_.”

“It should be specimens, plural, since there were two ‘specimens,’ John and Teyla,” Elizabeth said. “Or four, counting yourself and Ronon in the Dart buffer.”

“Obviously, _The Specimens Strike Back_ doesn’t have the same ring, Elizabeth,” Rodney said. “And I didn’t realize that you’re the grammar police.”

“I am a linguist,” Elizabeth said.

“Is this a reference to the _Empire Strikes Back_ movie?” asked Teyla.

“Yeah. Clever, right?” Rodney said.

“Nah, not that clever, since in that movie the Empire were the bad guys,” said Elizabeth. “My advice: stick to your scientific reports instead of writing science fiction.”

“Ha. Ha. You’re so funny,” Rodney said before refocusing his attention on the plate of food in front of him.

“You see, Rodney, this is why you’re not allowed to name things,” John said.

Any further argument was cut off by Ronon’s arrival. After a quick glance at John and Teyla, he said, “Good. It’s about time.”

Rodney swallowed a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Time? For what?”

\-----------------

**The End.**


End file.
